Machine Collaboration

My concept for Project 3 was to create a series of digital collages that comment on gender roles in the old south. I created a storyline that takes the viewer through the relationship between a husband and wife, and more specifically, the wife’s personal experiences and treatment within this relationship. The characters represent a stereotypical married couple that is contained by traditional gender roles in the south. The piece uses undertones of feminism to create a narrative that is meant to be both a commentary and response to the fact that some of these stereotypes and experiences are still prevalent today. I used Adobe Firefly to generate my desired images for my collages. I then used Adobe Photoshop to piece together my chosen elements. In addition to these, I also used ChatGpt to research traditional southern gender roles. At first, I was unsure if I wanted to create a project with such a heavy topic. However, I received feedback from my peers telling me that I should continue with my idea and see what I can come up with. I also was told that if I incorporated or used text in some way, that it may help guide my audience in the intended direction of thought when viewing my collages. 

If I could redo this project, I would explore the storyline I wanted to create further to take the viewer through a direct timeline. I feel that when my classmates view my project that they may be confused as to why I chose this topic, and I believe that if my collages had a clearer meaning, the confusion would clear up. I honestly enjoyed using machine learning throughout this project. I was amazed by the images that were being generated and how the machine responds to different prompts fed into it. I was surprised when the machine began generating images of mostly caucasian women when I typed in prompts such as, “beautiful woman” or how the keyword “southern” would make the machine generate photos of African American women. I believe the technology can be useful for generating images that are hyper-specific, such as those chosen for my collages. I also think that AI can be a useful tool to generate images for sketch ideas for the beginning steps of a project. I believe that as long as the machine isn’t doing all of the work for you, then it can be used to create some compelling art.