Reflected in the Closed Eye

I've been working with the same set of 100 images that I found online many years ago for quite a while now. I've used this dataset in the past to create various types of artworks, such as generative portraits, abstract art, and music compositions. What fascinates me is how this one dataset can produce a wide range of artistic expressions while maintaining its unique personality.

For this specific project, I wanted to try something new. Alongside creating a new series of generative abstract portraits, I decided to incorporate hand-drawn portraits. I drew a portrait for each image in the dataset, resulting in two versions of each image—one hand-drawn and one generated by my new algorithm. To create cohesive artworks, I drew inspiration from Jay Masters' poem, "Recipe for Prison Pruno." In this poem, sentences from two different sources are alternated to create a compelling narrative. I thought this approach could beautifully blend my two sources of visual art.

Additionally, I developed a generative algorithm for composing music to accompany these pieces. This algorithm uses the same dataset to determine the timing of each note on the timeline. Each portrait is presented in sync with each note in the composition, with one version of a portrait followed by the other until all the notes in the music have been played.