Wanton Biology
Video, 2023
About the artwork
Is it alive? Is it a plant or some kind of aquatic creature? I like the softness of this. At times it's like watercolor over ink lines. The question is: Even though its shape changes second to second, is it still living the same life? We all know chameleons and butterflies in our social lives. They change their looks, but they're still the same inside. When you think of those people with their focus on appearance, do you also find that they're the least susceptible to introspection? Are they armored against innermost thoughts? The title is "Wanton Biology", but how does personality figure into this?
This was made in late November, 2023 using AnimateDiff and IPAdapter running on ComfyUI.
Pine Tree State Mind Control
Audio explanation
Listen to Mordunkus discuss this work.
If you have the tools to create any image you want, why would you just want to regurgitate the same art styles you've been force fed for your whole life? If you can tweak your output -- sometimes mathematically, as in "face minus eyes" or "goat plus eyes" -- to build something impossible in nature, why wouldn't you? Yet there are artists TODAY who make Impressionist art ("the filthy thieves with their forger's tools. No originality, so they have to steal!"). It doesn't have to be that way. A hundred years ago an Italian poet, FT Marinetti, wrote words so powerful they inspired painters and musicians. Dada poet Tristan Tzara inspired painters, sculptors, and photographers. Surrealist poet Bréton inspired all of the above plus filmmakers. Today's AI prompters are the poets of the day, using words to inspire visuals.
Mordunkus (because why not third person?) uses AI tools to bring you images unlike those you've seen before: abstract and surreal videos that often tickle your visceral sensibilities. Maybe it looks like a colonoscopy video with plants and machinery? Or is that a face? A chicken foot? Heavy on the WTF, Mordunkus does NOT Want to show you the same old thing. And almost to contradict that last sentence, the vision behind the images has been consistent over the [past two or three] years even as the tools have changed.
But is it "Art"? Marcel Duchamp answered that question already: who cares?
Negative Prompt: Signature, watermark, cartoon, face, skull, eyeball