Dissonance

Dreams of Dissonance, 2024

 In this age of rapid technological advancement, artificial intelligence has created quite a disturbance in the contemporary art community. Creating artwork at the speed of light, with no physical artist creating it, AI is able to create the unimaginable. In a fusion of two artists with rather different backgrounds and artistic aesthetic’s, this artwork that I created using the free AI database ‘DALL-E mini’ did not disappoint. This work communicates the ever-expanding boundaries of AI while exploring the themes of the German photo-collage artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) who’s career picked up in the early twentieth century, as well as Francisco Goya (1746-1828), who was a Spanish romantic painter. Both artists from very different times, using extremely different mediums, AI was able to generate an artwork that I could have never imagined.

One may be questioning, ‘Why Goya and Höch?’. To begin, I reflected on artists who had made an impact on my artistic educational career. I wanted my AI-generated work to be something in which I could resonate with, something that felt like it belonged to me. A work of art that has intention, which is why I decided on Goya and Höch. Throughout my university education, Goya has been a constant over the years. I found myself constantly coming back to analyze his works such as his series titled Black Paintings which communicate his dark outlook on humanity using a low-saturated palette, as well as his etchings which depict themes of insanity and mental illness. I was drawn to his work as his theme of mental illness always intrigued me as he portrayed it in such a raw and dark way. His paintings often include a very overall dark-toned palette, with the inclusion of otherworldly creatures to depict these themes of mental illness and insanity in the early nineteenth century. I found that Goya’s dark and haunting exploration of the human condition and society related closely to another artist which I have revisited constantly over the years. Hannah Höch was one of the first artists to explore photomontage in the early nineteenth century and was a well-respected artist during the Dada movement. As Höch explores themes of gender and societal norms, her work challenges these themes as she takes cut-outs from consumer magazines creating distorted and disproportionate human-figures that challenge the notion of beauty in society as well as gender roles. I saw a strong connection between Goya and Höch as they both explore something deeper and darker, they challenge the surface-level problems of mental illness and gender roles grotesquely by using these desaturated tones and non-human-like figures. I thought, how interesting to bring these two artists together, to blend techniques and materials. The result was difficult to imagine just exactly what it would look like, and how I would get this result using one single prompt in DALL-E mini.

As a visual artist myself, I had a very unique experience while ‘creating’ this work of art. For me, creating or being ‘creative’ is to generate something new based on your own ideas and imaginative process. Dreams of Dissonance [Fig 1] is the product of my own thought process, the image has just been generated for me, using data from the internet to create one image that relates back to my ideas. Being an artist, I feel a disconnect, can I call this my own work? Am I the creator? In the words of Joanna Zyliska in ‘AI Art’^[1], who quotes Dorléac and Neutres claiming that ‘The artist no longer creates work; he creates creation.”^[2], I resonated with this theory as I feel as though I created this ‘creation’ of work assisted by AI, and resulting from a database.

The one element in which I; the artist, could control during the production of this AI-generated art was the prompt itself. Using particular language, the prompt has everything to do with the outcome of the artwork in which I am aiming to be generated. Höch was one of the earliest artists to work with Collage/photomontage in Germany during the early 19th century exploring themes of gender and identity, while Goya was a Spanish romantic painter whose work explores themes of insanity and politics from the early eighteenth century. While narrowing down a prompt that would result in Dreams of Dissonance, I began with the idea of blending the two artists’ style, as well as their preferred mediums.

Starting with the idea of Collage and Goya’s dark tones, I generated a few keywords in the context of Höch such as surrealism and collage. In an attempt to generate elements of Goya’s work I used ‘Style of’ and Narrative, as many of his works communicate a story of his own personal views on the human experience. I then used these keywords in multiple different prompts to create different images each time. The base of my prompt was for the AI to create “An artwork with the essence of Hannah Höch’s collage technique, infused with Francisco Goya’s style and elements of…”, with each prompt I changed the outcome of the image by changing the word in which followed the end of the prompt. Using ‘Narrative’ and ‘Surrealism’ I was able to use AI to generate works that looked completely different from one another. The term ‘narrative’ interested me as I wanted the final outcome of my work to be readable, I wanted to enhance the subtleties of narrative within Höch and Goya’s work. Surrealism was a term that I used to explore the unusual scenes within the two artists’ work, as Goya’s dreamlike, grotesque and imaginary subjects may be said to anticipate surrealism, thus I wanted to highlight theses aspects.When using the term ‘Narrative’, the database created one specific work that shocked me; a work that depicted a gallery setting. I found this amazing as not only did it create multiple artworks in that were all cohesive in a paired layout, but it also created an environment for the multiple works within a gallery. Two pairs of smaller artworks are placed on what seems to be a wall within a gallery, in the middle of the four smaller works; a larger canvas is placed. The smaller works are difficult to read as they are almost abstract. All in a dark black and yellow hue, these works act as studies for the larger central canvas. The middle being a rectangular-shaped canvas, is reminiscent of a figure and possibly an animal. In the top left corner, a dark cut-out can be seen which resembles hair and a body. Below is a blending of different shapes and cut-out collage pieces, all following Goya’s diluted colour palette resembling a robust animal figure. Possibly retrieved from Goya’s Bullfight series done around 1820, depicting a scene of a bullfight performance. Nearing the figure on the left, a red flag can be seen above the bull-like figure, tying into the ‘bullfighter’ presented in Goya’s works. The ‘bullfighter’ was the performer in which held the coloured flag, waving it in an act to agitate the bull. Reading the central piece as a possible bull fight, this work poses many questions regarding the presentation of the subject matter of the four smaller works. What is the relation among the various pieces?Do they have any relation to the bullfights? What type of setting is this, an art gallery perhaps? Is this image meant to be read as a collage work?

Exploring the different outcomes of the changed prompt and the results changed drastically when I replaced ‘Narrative’ with ‘Surrealism’. Resulting in an explosion of colour and collage, the generated multiple images which included cut and paste images generated from Höch’s work, in conjunction with a scenic background that was reminiscent of Goya’s paintings.

Thus, Dreams of Dissonance [Fig 1] was created after the input of many trial and error prompts, I had finally chosen my final work. Using ChatGPT, I entered the prompt “describe an artwork with the essence of Höch’s collage technique with the style of Goya using elements of Surrealism”, resulting in an artistic analysis of an artwork that did not exist. I was astounded to see that the AI database searched the internet for content that analyzed the work of Höch and Goya, creating a description of what a collaborative work might look like. Interestingly, ChatGPT generated a title that did not exist, that title was ‘Dreams of Dissonance’. I was surprised as it perfectly described, and captured, the essence of the work that I had generated using Dall-E Mini. According to the Oxford Languages, the term ‘Dissonance’^[3] can be described as “a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements”. This term fittingly captures Goya and Höch’s differences and individual style while describing the harmonious piece that is Dreams of Dissonance.

Dreams of Dissonance [Fig 1] is an artwork that is embedded with Höch’s collage technique, whilst including Goya’s use of deep rich tones. This work seemingly presents a portrait of an alien-like figure in the centre of the piece that has distorted facial features. This peculiar and enigmatic figure can be traced back to many elements presented in Goya’s work as he often created paintings that depicted otherworldly creatures and figures. It is important to note that Goya suffered from an autoimmune disease for five years which caused intense fevers resulting in intense hallucinations. ^[4] After recovering he was left with many impairments such as hearing loss and lasting trauma from the illness he endured. His artistic practice took a shift due to this sever illness as he started exploring the dark view on human psyche that he now had as a result of the trauma he endured.^[5] As the central figure in this work has its head tilted, we are able to visually see that the creature is lacking an ear. Knowing that Goya’s work went through immense changes after his illness and hearing loss, this work presents an exaggerated depiction of that moment in Goya’s artistic career. Around the head of this alien-like figure, we see a muddy array of cut-out pieces which emit from the figure’s mouth region and conjure at the top of the head. The muddy black rectangle shape in that emits from the mouth signifies an almost silencing of the figure, a theme which was most likely taken from themes explored in Höch’s work, often conveying the silencing of women. She created works that challenged the absurd gender norms that were present within the media and sought to expose and shed light on these issues. The shape around the top of the head allows for a distortion of the figure, commonly seen in Höch she often creates humans with disproportionate figures which act as a form of mockery of women in the media which were portrayed as having no flaws. This mass around the figure’s head could be interpreted as a possible hairstyle, relating to themes of fashion; it could also refer to the continuing theme of the silencing of women. The large muddy area acts as a depiction of the artistic and intellectual traits that women were forced to keep bottled up, due to the constrained views on women in power.

After further research to discover just exactly where the AI had generated the unusual figure presented in Dreams of Dissonance, I found that by a simple google image search of Goya’s artwork, one of the top results was Insult to Injury, 2003 [Fig 3]^[6]. The image being an appropriation of Goya’s work done by artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, this piece presents an etching done by Goya from his series titled Disasters of War. ^[7] As this work is one of the top results when searching Google for Francisco Goya’s artworks, it is likely that DALL-E mini retrieved this image and used it in Dreams of Dissonance [Fig 1]. As Jake and Dinos Chapman create works of mockery, this ear enlargement is most definitely a means of mocking Goya’s hearing loss in a lighthearted way. When looking at the figure in Dreams of Dissonance, this ear enlargement has vanished, although, elements of the dark sunken eyes and the pale grey head is still present. I think works which appropriate other artists such as Insult to Injury are extremely crucial in understanding AI generated works, as the database grabs any source from the internet that has any relationship with the prompt being used. In this case, as I used Goya’s name within my prompt, DALLE-mini used all of the top image sources resulting in the other-worldly creature presented in Dreams of Dissonance. 

As this figure is placed in the middle of the work, against the muddy landscaped background; it resembles a cut-out piece from the collage material that Höch works with. Working with fashion magazine cutouts, much of Höch’s work includes elements of style and beauty.^[8]  In Dreams of Dissonance, the alien-like figure is wearing what looks to be a patterned blouse in a lowly saturated colour palette. With the blouse lightly draped over the figure, a strikingly bright red rectangle shape distorts the clothing in the lower right corner. Creating a highly emphasized point in the work, this bright red streak can be immediately recognized as a frequent reoccurring element within Höch’s work. Within many of her collage work, the low saturated images from early consumer magazines are accompanied by a bright red or blue element which provides for a high contrast within the piece. Much like in Dreams of Dissonance, I find the eye is drawn to these areas of high saturation allowing for the eye to wander throughout the work, noticing every cut-out which was placed with intention. As the eye moves around this particular work, many blurred ‘cut-out’ like pieces can be seen scattered around the head of the figure. One clearer area can be noticed in the bottom left of the work, again, in this signature lowly saturated palette, an image that closely resembles Goya’s Black Paintings^[9].

The Black Paintings were created in the late nineteenth century, after the loss of Goya’s hearing. This series of paintings all included this horrific portrayal of the human experience, society, and mental illness/insanity^[10]. In most of these works, a mass of humans are seen piled up in agony in a specific spot on the canvas. Within the cut-out in Dreams of Dissonance, this image is not very clear and is blurred, although one can make out that this image was sourced directly from the common depictions in Goya’s Black Painting series. In the background, a luminous hilly landscape in low saturated yellow tones allows for emphasis on the main central figure. This landscape was furthermore a product of the Black Painting, many of these works are seen with rolling hills that fade into the distance as the central figures in more detail are brought forward.

I want to conclude with the words of Donald Barthelme, a writer and collage artist, who stated that “the principle of collage is the central principle of all art in the twentieth century in all media” ^[11], speaking to the way in which fragments from different sources of art throughout history become a whole, which is exactly how AI generates artworks. Dreams of Dissonance embraces an appreciation of collage as it combines elements from multiple sources in a ‘cut and paste’ ^[12]fashion to create a unique and innovative work. Acting as a homage to both Goya and Höch the AI-generated artwork honours both of their distinct artistic abilities, to create a work that explores their themes of gender, identity, and the human experience physically and psychologically. In this age of AI art on the rise, the term ‘creative’ becomes a question of who exactly the creator is, and the limits of what can be created become limitless.