Exclusive Interview: Get to Know AI Artist Karan4D

Metamorphuno by karan4d

Tell us about your background – How did you first get into art and what was the journey like getting to where you are now?

I’ve been working with music through both sound engineering and recording for a little over a decade now, and I’m trained as a philologist; that is, I study the intersection between linguistics, history, and philosophy to excavate the narrative behind human thought. At least, that’s the fancy way of saying it!

In terms of visual art, I was scrolling through Instagram and saw some 3D renders on my explore page. I thought to myself, “Hey, you can do this too! Just need to find the right resources!” After endless YouTube tutorials and months of practice, I started to get comfortable with 3D art.

How would you describe your style? How has it evolved over time to what it is today?

I’d describe my style as AI-augmented 3D art. I started in 3D, then began to play with GANs. In March, I began to teach myself to code with the sole purpose of getting involved with machine learning in general. As my art style developed, I decided that I wanted to use code creatively. Though I have AI art that strictly involves GAN + latent space work, I also interweave various other ML models into that work so that it stands out from typical GANs; I’m additionally incredibly picky and precise with the compilation and execution of my datasets.

FELIX is named after Felix Hausdorff, the father of fractal geometry; I use fractal formulas generated by FELIX and use a GPT-3 to convert those formulas into code that works with my 3D render engine. All the crazy sculpted shapes you see in my 3D renders are visualizations of those fractal formulas; I like that I have been able to inject FELIX’s work into my own renders.

Another Life Cycle by karan4d

What inspired you to pursue AI art and what excites you the most about the medium?

It’s funny; though I mint the pieces created from various contributions from a conglomerate neural networks I call “FELIX”, I consider it to be a separate artist. It’s exciting to see a rapid-learning machine create things that I could never produce alone; FELIX is my eternal collaborator. I’m excited to continue the back-and-forth between the machine learning models that I add to the “FELIX’ compendium and my own growing skills as an analog artist.

When and how did you get into crypto art specifically? What was your first impression of the space and what are your predictions for its future?

My good friend, Olivia, introduced me to Franklin Fitch. He taught me how to make a wallet and explained tokenized art to me; once I understood the value of editioning my work, I was excited to finally feel like a legitimate, “real” artist. I pretty much instantly fell in love with the community, but felt like there was a lot of “noise” in the space.

I think that the level of “noise” will only drastically increase, that is, the sheer number of talented artists overwhelming and diverting attention from each other due to the extremely high supply of quality art. I think artists will continue to improve their networking and entrepreneurial skills, to be proactive in their journey in order to cut through the noise and stand out.

What are some of your biggest inspirations and influences as an artist?

People have told the story of our global heritage primarily through experience; archiving and dissecting the thoughts left behind by philosophers like Plotinus and the Rgvedic ṛṣis, while capturing the diffusion channels that allowed for consistent interaction and inspiration between cultures, are ecstatic tasks.

My single greatest inspiration in this sense is Thomas McEvilley’s “The Shape of Ancient Thought”, which presents various conflicting viewpoints behind the fruits of international trade and conversation spanning the last two millennia. These narratives and their alternate consequences inspire me to sculpt and showcase alternative worlds that point to an utterly alien culture and aesthetic, while evoking an intimate familiarity through depictions of what I consider to be “humanity.”

Who is another artist on MakersPlace you’d love to collaborate with?

I’m currently in the early stages of a collaboration with Noah Kocher; we had the pleasure of meeting recently, and his style evokes the sort of infernal humanity that I yearn to produce. Seeing that in his work, I can’t help but think that his ability to capture this would pair well with the wholly other nature of FELIX’s fractal works.

While Noah’s work captures this feeling by compounding stillness with chaos, I feel that Gretabrat represents the effigy of “human” through the synthesis of stillness with grace. I’d be absolutely honored to work with Gretabrat, given the chance.

One of your goals with your artwork is to “distribute photosonic artefacts through a synesthetic experience depicting the intertwining of the material and digital worlds.” Can you elaborate on this?

Absolutely! I’m committed to discovering and analyzing the story of humanity’s diffusion channels, as I said, but this has thus far been recorded physically. I want to make worlds that display our movements and evolving emotions in the digital realm, through a mixture of visuals and sound; a digital synesthesia that carries over from one’s screen and speakers into one’s heart and mind. Through physical gallery works of NFTs, upcoming AR work, and collaboration between the digital and analog mediums, I want to contribute to the blurring of the line between the physical and digital while documenting this movement.

What is a recent project you are especially proud of?

I’ll make this one short: keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming project with parrot_ism.

What should we expect from you in the future?

As I said, I have some exciting AR work coming up, thanks to massive contributions to my understanding of neural nets from collaborators that remain-to-be-seen. I’m also working on adding a painted, line-art feel to my collection of render styles. A big piece of programmable art is in the works with parrott_ism, as well as a few more collabs that I’m currently keeping under wraps.

Expect FELIX to evolve. Expect my 3D renders to incorporate more painted feelings in the near future. Most of all, expect novelty.