DREAM 0: AI Experiment
Thank you for the artistic inspiration: Your work is great! Congratulations on transforming new technology into spectacular art!
Mark Batson (4x Grammy-winning producer — Dr. Dre, Eminem, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Nas, LeAnn Rimes, 50 Cent)
When I typed my first words into the text-to-image AI Dall-E 2 on September 9, 2022, I had no idea how much artificial intelligence would change my life—a fundamental change, similar to the birth of my son two years earlier.
My first sentence was: »Screen print depicting a blond, two-year-old boy with blue eyes wearing headphones« – freely based on an idea by street artist Txus Parras, who introduced me to screen printing during my time at Kunsthaus Tacheles, a few years before I held my first exhibitions of contemporary visual and video art at Defcon Labs in Berlin.
When I first saw the images generated by Dall-E, I was overwhelmed. I immediately realized that we are witnessing a technological revolution that will radically change all areas of human productivity. A powerful, but also a dangerous technology. I decided to experiment with the new tools for a year.
On the internet, I searched for and found the first specialized communities that were now springing up like mushrooms and grew from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of members within months – and produced the first stars of the new genre. Soon, our posts reached millions, while AI art made its way into private collections, galleries, and museums.
The new AI systems, Dall-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT, have become my daily companions. In the mornings, after starting kindergarten, I use them to interpret and visualize the dreams, traumas that surfaced, and visions of the night. In the evenings, when my little son fell asleep after playing together, I spent time on my playground in parallel worlds and the dystopian and utopian »what if« scenarios.
Soon, AI came under heavy fire. A wave of bitter criticism swept through AI forums, leading to heated, sometimes toxic controversies. The critics were certainly right on many points: Overnight, a clique of tech feudalists had seized humanity's collective creative legacy—without paying a cent for it or even thinking for a moment about the disruptive consequences of the new technology.
Artificial intelligence undoubtedly has the potential to make people's lives easier, more beautiful, and indeed better. But if left unchecked, it can also have catastrophic consequences. Not just through the destruction of millions of jobs. The use of AI in politics, warfare, surveillance, and biotechnology increases the destructive power of human technology, as only the atomic bomb did in 1945.
After a year of my experiment, one result is clear: the first year, during which creative possibilities seem to increase almost hourly, will be followed by another year of AI-infused work. This will be accompanied by AI workshops, community gatherings, and exhibitions that manifest the transformative nature of AI in physical spaces—and introduce the public to key figures in the new global art movement.
As I write these lines, my son's laughter blends with the digital motifs dancing across the screen, a beautiful juxtaposition of the organic and the artificial. The advent of artificial intelligence has opened doors to a realm of infinite possibilities, and it is up to us to navigate this landscape responsibly, harnessing its potential for the betterment of future generations.
With love,
Tim Ra
About Tim Ra
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Tim Ra has spent 25 years working at the intersection of music, art, and technology. With a body of work that spans club, pop, and hip-hop releases, book publications with Max Dax, as well as contemporary visual and video art, he now presents himself as a traveler in the world of AI.