Generative Gestures. Algorithmic Abstraction. Brushstrokes generated with code, nested & compressed into a shaped canvas. These are the expressionist paintings a computer would dream up.

Four rarity features are listed below. Other traits also contribute to the output but are not part of the rarity calculation, e.g. stroke weight, gestural complexity, and colors, which are chosen randomly (no defined palettes).

Layers: 1-7
Determines the number of gestures that are layered on top of one another. "7 Layers" is the rarest outcome at ~2% expected occurrence; 1 & 6 Layers are the 2nd rarest at ~4%.

Closed Loops: Yes/No
Determines whether the gestures close in on themselves, creating an infinite line (it's not always obvious by looking at the image). ~30% expected chance of Closed Loop output.

Dark Mode: Yes/No
Dim the lights. ~10% expected rate.

Transparency: Yes/No
Brushstrokes overlap each other with a combination of various transparency modes, creating even more unpredictable beauty. ~10% expected rate.

Generative Gestural Abstraction 1 #33

"Kumano (Emergent Structures 1)" is a collection of generative works that emulate analog effects from painting, printmaking, and textile design. It is the first generative collection in a continuing series called Emergent Structures.

The title of this collection is borrowed from Kumano-zome (熊野染め), a traditional Japanese craft of resist-dyed fabric that creates beautiful analog interference patterns (moiré). These textiles, often rendered in tones of indigo dye, date back at least two hundred years, and yet they can feel magically modern. 

The primary structure of "Kumano" is a mesh of overlapping angled lines that function just like the hand-printed lines in Kumano-zome textiles.

My background is in abstract painting, and one of my goals for this collection was to create an abstract "painting space" and develop a painterly visual language, and then treat the outputs like I would treat a running series of paintings; exploring and working through all the ideas, within certain constraints, trying to exhaust every possibility.

I wanted the outputs to look like they were created by hand, with soft edges and manual imperfections. Colors are deliberately "mis-registered" and shapes/lines are subtly askew. The "Viscosity" feature turns emergent moiré patterns into flattened, solid forms, and renders them as if they were painted with watercolors, or stamped with bleeding inks.


The composition of each piece is mostly determined by five main components:

1. Layers of repeating lines at various angles and spacing, which often overlap and interact to create complex moiré patterns (Kumano Layers)

2. A "Horizon" section that creates a foreground space and a horizon line, bringing the piece into a painterly landscape space

3. Bold caution stripes of various color, thickness, opacity, and orientation

4. Floating "Satellite" shapes that sometimes appear, evoking moons or man-made objects hovering in space

5. A special mix of "Viscosity" and "Erosion" that makes the paint bleed, congeal, and dissolve in unpredictable ways


The overarching color story of each piece is determined by a few interrelated palettes:

- Ten possible Background Colors
- Eight possible palettes for the layered lines (Kumano Palette)
- Eight possible colors of Caution Stripes
- Six possible colors for the Horizon/Foreground layer

When applied in combination and then run through the Viscosity and/or Erosion filters, the breadth of color possibilities is enormous, but always remains connected and coherent.


The algorithm's compositional structure also shows extreme variety, from highly complex to super clean, minimal, and subtle. Everything in the artwork is generated directly from the p5.js script; no external inputs, filters, or images are used.


These pieces are best viewed at large scale in order to appreciate the fine details and nuance. To save a high-res version, just type "S" on your keyboard and a high-res PNG will be generated and downloaded. This can take some time, so please be patient while it renders in the background. In most browsers the high-res output will be 5000 x 6250px (31+ megapixels).

Kumano (Emergent Structures 1) #89

Kumano (Emergent Structures 1) #65

Generative Gestural Abstraction 1 #1

This is a digitally manipulated, curated generative artwork. The source images are generative outputs selected from a custom p5.js script, and then merged and edited in Photoshop. This is part of a running series called "Generative Gestural Abstractions." 

Emil Corsillo
Nests Study 002 (G.G.A.)
4200x4200 pixels
PNG-24 image
May 2022

Nests Study 002 (G.G.A.)

This is a curated generative artwork, selected from hundreds of outputs generated by a custom p5.js script. It is part of a running series called "Emergent Structures." 

Everything was generated directly from the algorithm; no external inputs, filters, or images were used.

1450x1812 pixels
PNG image

Emil Corsillo, 2022

Emergent Structures Study 020

An homage to Grant Riven Yun's "Cow" which is minted under CC0 license to invite derivatives.

This painting is created with assistance from DALL-E-2, using the original "Cow" image as input. I love the idea that DALL-E-2 thinks Grant's cow, drawn from an unusual aerial perspective on a big blank field, is actually an orca. In a way it underscores the original point of view from which Grant sees the world.

I've replaced Grant's signature at the bottom of the image with DALL-E-2's watermark.

Minted for the Tezos #TunaTime event, August 2022.

Orca (Cow)

Experimental abstract-glitch-AI-painting stuff. I like to think I'm embracing the materiality at the heart of the diffusion medium in these pieces; pushing the machine to do what it does best; trying to expose its raw, intuitive state and let it produce the unvarnished, unselfconscious images that it really wants to.

Stable Diffusion + minimal post-processing

Emil Corsillo
1440x1800 pixels
PNG-24
January 2023

Golden Hour

Kumano (Emergent Structures 1) #31

Kumano (Emergent Structures 1)

Generative Gestural Abstraction 1 #4

Generative Gestural Abstraction 1

This is a digitally manipulated, curated generative painting. The base images were selected from outputs generated by a custom p5.js script, and then painted into and edited in Adobe Photoshop. Several AI outputs from DALL-E-2 were also used as source material. The circular form is the eponymous satellite, floating forever in the inhospitable void of abstract space.

This piece is part of my running series called "Emergent Structures." 

Emil Corsillo
Satellite 11 (Emergent Structures)
4000x5000 pixels
PNG-24
August 2022

767589

Hic et Nunc

Emergent Structures Study 019

Versum

An homage to Grant Riven Yun's "Cow" which is minted under CC0 license to invite derivatives.

This painting is created with assistance from DALL-E-2, using the original "Cow" image as input. I love the idea that DALL-E-2 thinks Grant's cow, drawn from an unusual aerial perspective on a big blank field, is actually an orca. In a way it underscores the original point of view from which Grant sees the world.

I've replaced Grant's signature at the bottom of the image with DALL-E-2's watermark.

An homage to Grant Riven Yun's "Cow" which is minted under CC0 license to invite derivatives.

AI-assisted memories from an interminable journey, alone.

Stable Diffusion + post-processing

Emil Corsillo
1000x1250 pixels
PNG-24
October 2022

Solus (Study 15)

Early works that became studies for my EmProps Long-Form Generative AI collection "Ghost In The Machine" + the first 40 pieces in my "Solus" series + early pieces from my running project "Palimpsests"

AI Studies

This is part of a running project where I execute at least one drawing every day. I started the project on May 20, 2022 and will keep it going as long as possible. Not every drawing will be minted as an NFT — just the ones I like.

There is also a physical version of this drawing: 3.5" x 5" / wax pastels on archival paper. If interested in purchasing the physical piece, please message me on Twitter. The physical drawing will only be available to the owner of the NFT. If you are considering purchasing this piece on the secondary market, you can contact me to find out if the physical drawing is still available.

Emil Corsillo
Daily Drawing 052322D
3024x4032px JPG
May 2022

Daily Drawing 052322D

This is a running project where I execute at least one drawing every day. I started the project on May 20, 2022 and will keep it going as long as possible. Not every drawing will be minted as an NFT — just the ones I like.

This is part of a running project where I execute at least one drawing every day. I started the project on May 20, 2022 and will keep it going as long as possible. Not every drawing will be minted as an NFT — just the ones I like.

There is also a physical version of this drawing: 3.5" x 5" / wax pastels on archival paper. If interested in purchasing the physical piece, please message me on Twitter. The physical drawing will only be available to the owner of the NFT. If you are considering purchasing this piece on the secondary market, you can contact me to find out if the physical drawing is still available.

Emil Corsillo
Daily Drawing 060422A
3024x4032px JPG
June 2022

Daily Drawing 060422A

The Daily Drawings

Emil Corsillo
Stable Diffusion
2160 × 1440 pixels
PNG-24
May 2023

Children's Day

Future communities of explorers have emerged from the long hibernation ...

Propane Suits

Utopia

Emil Corsillo
Stable Diffusion
2688 x 3456 PNG
August 2023

Created with EmProps OpenStudio (private alpha).

Saudade Study 1

Emergent Abstraction

This token is waiting to be generated by the EmProps Art Generator.

The Absurdist's Guide to the Underworld #29

"Onism" is a term coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, used to describe a frustration or sadness derived from the awareness of how little of the world we will experience in our lives. 

It comes from thinking about unfulfilled experiences, and extends to thoughts about how small and finite we are relative to the realm of all possible experiences/outcomes. As someone who once thought he would have a lifelong career as a painter, this idea resonates with me deeply, and it feels doubly relevant in the context of my relationship with AI and generative art.

ONISM is a project I've been working on passionately and circuitously for more than a year. I've tested dozens of versions of this algorithm and thousands of outputs, and I like to think it has evolved over time, but it certainly has not been a linear process.

Over that time, a lot of personal emotional history has become calcified in these works. So much of this project is about the regret and longing that's inextricably tied to art-making for me (and many of us) — all the paintings I wish I'd made but never did. The time I never afforded myself, the sacrifices I never made, the places I never went.

It's also about the impossibility of conceptualizing infinite possibilities — infinite possible outcomes, infinite possible selves. And of course it's about the exciting/perplexing idea that these digital images that I've created at double-arm's-length, via two separate generative algorithms, can feel so expressive and authentically imbued with emotion. 

But the beauty in all of it, in the end, is that I actually do get to make all the paintings I wish I'd made but never did. 

And I can keep making more and more of them, thanks to the magical, iterative power of this Long-Form AI paintbrush that I'm lucky enough to hold in my hand.


...


ONISM is a Long-Form AI project created with two generative systems: a generative script written in p5.js and a prompt-based AI process via Stable Diffusion. The p5 script outputs an image, which is fed into Stable Diffusion as an img2img input. Both processes incorporate pseudorandom weighted variables that make the outcomes dramatically varied, completely unpredictable, yet deterministic.

All of this was built entirely within EmProps OpenStudio Beta.

ONISM is the first in a series of EmProps MemberTokens. Ownership of a MemberToken confers certain privileges, including a lifetime subscription to EmProps OpenStudio at the Basic subscription tier.

Emil Corsillo
ONISM
EmProps MemberToken #1
Long-Form AI via EmProps OpenStudio Beta
2688 x 3456 PNG
October 9th, 2023

EmProps MemberToken: ONISM #84

EmProps MemberToken

"One Thousand Elegies" is a very-long-form AI collection. One thousand editions of variable prompt-based, raw AI paintings.

This project — both the individual pieces and the collective whole — is a personal attempt to express my pain, guilt, empathy, confusion ... and the thousand other inexpressible emotions I feel when I look helplessly at the inhumane violence taking place in the world today. It is an epic; intentionally grand in scale, diverse, complex, abstract, messy, and contradictory. 


In these works I'm channeling some of my favorite painters from all periods of art history, from Pontormo to Soutine, Sonia Delaunay to Richard Diebenkorn, El Greco to Bill Traylor, Alice Neel to Goya, from Franz Kline to Amy Sillman ... and of course there's Robert Motherwell's haunting and heroic "Elegy to the Spanish Republic" series of paintings in the mix.

But this isn't just an exercise in remixing art history, it's more about my own efforts to make new paintings that feel new and private and deeply personal to me, while using samples from these artists that I know and love as my toolkit.

This project is also a continuation of what I really commenced with my collection "Onism," where I felt that I could make all the paintings I wish I'd made but never did. Where I could start to almost conceptualize infinite possibilities — infinite possible outcomes, infinite possible selves.

And of course it's about the perplexing idea that these digital images that I've created at arm's length via AI, can feel so expressive and imbued with emotion.

I also keep coming back to this poem, "The Children's Elegy," by Muriel Rukeyser 

Yes, I have seen their eyes. In peaceful gardens
the dark flowers now are always children's eyes,
full-colored, haunted as evening under fires
showered from the air of a burning country.

Shallow-featured children under trees
look up among green shadows of the leaves.
The angel, flaming, offers—in his hands
all is given and he does not change.
The child changes and takes.
All is given. He makes and changes.
The angel stands.

A flame over the tree. Night calling in the cloud.
And shadow among winds. Where does the darkness lie?
It comes out of the person, says the child.
A shadow tied and alive, trying to be.


Emil Corsillo
One Thousand Elegies
Long-Form AI via EmProps OpenStudio Beta
2304 x 3456 PNG
November 17, 2023


One Thousand Elegies #1

One Thousand Elegies #400

EmProps OpenStudio

Today at 4pm ET / 9pm UTC

En Plein Air (Series 2)
Long-Form AI via 
@emprops_io
 OpenStudio
36 unique editions
0.02 ETH each

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