Tezos

Maneki Neko - Irisated

Creator

tz1bxyQQt4sxQeoV8rEdnVJbZ8wB55AH4jPY

Description

@manekinekoaiart "Iris" is a moniker for three distinct concepts: a family of striking flowers, the Greek word for "rainbow"; and the messenger goddess named for transforming herself into one to quickly ferry information between the heavens and the earth. It seems likely that if she took a respite from her busy job, Iris would be at home in a field of irisated irises. 🏞️🌈🌫️ This piece began as a text-to-image collaboration with an AI to generate many graphic variations on a concept. It was finished by collaging curated images from several of the results to create a piece with a coherent color scheme, expression of a theme, and packed full of intricate detail. Bio: Maneki Neko is a formerly stifled artist and a software engineer by trade. Formally trained in art from childhood, she had to choose between school for art or computer science, and chose the latter knowing it would more easily secure a financial future. She could not escape the compulsion of graphic creation, however, and her passion manifested in the visual side of engineering: user interface design and development. Starting a family from a young age and motivated to grow her career, her free time and energy were limited until her child left the nest. What extra resources she had she spent on creative pursuits such as macro photography and digital art. In mid-2021, Maneki dived into the world of crypto and shortly after, NFTs. A new friend from those communities pointed her to an NFT project using proprietary AI to create art by just typing in descriptive text. It was instant obsession. Maneki spent her free time for months figuring out prompts to coax the AI to present her with an accurate representation of her imagination. On Twitter, she found a community using open-source AI text-to-image models. With their technical guidance, she experimented with open-source models. Still, results were not perfect. She began combining images from several results, using the AI as her “paintbrush” to create collages and that was her “Eureka” moment. While still evolving, a definite style has emerged for her art that she thinks of as “Anti-minimalist”. Her extremely intricate pieces that inspire curiosity to explore and discover new details have one main goal: to entice viewers to simply stare for a while. Her hope is to provide a moment of peace and distraction from whatever troubles her viewers may have. Maneki has released NFT collections on Foundation and OpenSea. Her work was featured on the home page of OpenSea for 4 days in April, 2022 and been included in several exhibitions.