Dalí to DALLE - Dr Will Renel

We’ve been interested in technology focused research and practice for a long time. In 2013, Touretteshero collaborated with Dr Tom Mitchell and Dr Joseph Hyde on The Alchemy of Chaos which converted a year of ticcing episodes into music that was presented at a TEDx talk at the Royal Albert Hall.

In 2015, I collaborated on a performance called 10 Minutes of Nothing which invited a small audience to experience Touretteshero ‘doing nothing’ for 10-minutes at the South London Gallery. During the performance a piece of software that we’d developed together – ‘the nothing machine’ – visualised her involuntary movements by using webcams and microphones to track them. The aim was to capture moments when ‘nothing’ actually happened (i.e., when she was completely still and silent).

A group of images from a performance called 10 Minutes of Nothing at South London Gallery in 2015. The top image is a series of colour photos overlaying one another. Jess, a white woman in her early 30’s with short curly brown hair is sitting on a beige carpet against a white wall dressed in all black. She is wearing black padded gloves. The overlaid images of Jess show her body in different positions. The image below this is a black and white photograph of Jess sitting on the same beige carpet against a white wall with her left leg outstretched. Overlaid on this image is a bright green line map connecting he different parts of her body; her head, her right arm/hand, her left arm/hand, her torso, her right leg, her right foot, her left leg, and her left foot. Each body part is marked with a big bold fluorescent green crosses. Below this is a black line visualisation of Jess’s movements during 10 Minutes of Nothing performance. The faint outline of Jess’s body and silhouette can be made out in this visualisation. To the left of this graphic is a triptych of matching images of Jess with both arms and her left leg outstretched. The top image of pink and electric blue. The one below this is b and w with high contrast. The one below this is black with a white outline of Jess’s outline.

In recent years there’s been a surge in AI art generators – software that uses an algorithm to create artwork based on information that you give it (such as a line of text). A few months ago, Leftwing Idiot told me about some new software he’d discovered called DALL· E 2, which is a new system from OpenAI that can ‘create realistic images and art from a description in natural language’. We were interested in how DALL·E 2 might respond to Touretteshero’s tics, but at the time you had to contact the company and join a waiting list to access the software. I joined the list and a couple of months later we received the big thumbs up:

‘you are invited to create with Dall E – we can’t wait to see what you create. As one of the first to access this technology, we trust you to use DALL E responsibly’.

We decided that it would be interesting to select tics from the Touretteshero archive using the ‘random tic generator’ and feed these into DALL·E 2. Creating artwork inspired by Touretteshero’s tics is the foundation of the gallery section of our website, but asking an algorithm to lead on the creative process of interpreting and visualising the tics was a new and exciting prospect for us all. DALL·E 2 recommends that you suggest an object, place and style (e.g. an octopus in the jungle as a line drawing) to get the most from the software. I created a longlist of around 50 tics and then steered towards those that loosely followed the object-location format. Here are some of the results:

Batman in a pastry shop in Leeds with the whole of Hufflepuff

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. Batman in full costume, stands behind a big wooden pastry counter adorned with different types baked goods. A young person in a brown blazer, shirt and tie, presumably a Hufflepuff student from Harry Potter book series is leaning on the counter in the foreground of the image. Large wooden shelves wall the back of the pastry shop.

Batman in a pastry shop in Leeds with the whole of Hufflepuff

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. Interior of a pastry shop in a lavender dusky hue in a graphic comic book style. A queue of people are formed along the counter of the pastry shop. A small boy in a cloak is holding a wand and looking on at a stack of sandwiches and pasties. A businessman to the right of the boy in a trench coat and suit is clutching a pasty. In the right foreground is a partially visible batman, in full black costume and mask. The body of his costume is canary yellow.

I’m an 18th century snake charmer

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A bold graphic painting style image of a partial profile of a man holding a cobra backed onto a bright magenta background.

I’m an 18th century snake charmer

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A bold fluorescent rendering of a snake charmer in bright magenta pink dress. The outline of an orange and fluorescent yellow cobra with its giant split forked tongue is in the foreground is in the midst of being charmed.

All I want for Christmas is a biscuit and the building blocks of life

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A large gingerbread man with white frosting sits to one side of the image next to a tall tapering stack of duplo building blocks. The blocks are red, green, yellow and blue.

All I want for Christmas is a biscuit and the building blocks of life

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A group of Christmas themed biscuits sit in front yellow and red stack of building blocks. A gingerbread Christmas tree with a big yellow star on top of it with blue magenta and green decorative baubles on the tree sits next to stack of two biscuits.

I have 1400 men in my pocket

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A navy velvet pocket filled with hundreds of miniature abstract men.

 

There’s a cat in the garden called Barbara Windsor crawling around on its hands and knees

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A painting of a woman dressed as the Cheshire Cat with Barbara Windsors haircut is crouched down and crawling along a muddy garden scene.

There’s a cat in the garden called Barbara Windsor crawling around on its hands and knees

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A rendering of Barbara Windsor crouched down on all fours dressed in a grey metallic body con cat suit with pink and grey cat ears. She is wearing long sleeve black skin tight gloves and is crouched down on some grey cement amongst a green garden with pink flowers.

There’s a cat in the garden called Barbara Windsor crawling around on its hands and knees

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A rendering of Barbara Windsor in a watercolour style painting is crouched down on all fours dressed in a black and electric blue body con cat suit with a black cat ear headband. She is wearing long sleeve electric blue skin tight gloves and is crouched down on some grass.

There’s a penguin coming down the road, dressed as a panda

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. An unsaturated colour photo rendering of a large highway with mountains in the distance and a blue sky with white fluffy clouds. In the centre of the highway a large penguin figure is standing with a motorbike helmet obscuring

There’s a penguin coming down the road, dressed as a panda

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A icey blue computer generated image of large penguin standing in the middle of a road.

Plastic bag, one day you’ll be on Antiques Roadshow

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A clear cloudy plastic bag hangs on a stand of exhibits and paintings.

Plastic bag, one day you’ll be on Antiques Roadshow

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A group of people with their hands raised gathered around an orange plastic bag on a white table.

Pest control to Major Tom

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A spaceman and a person in a pest control suit stand next to one another in a blue environment. The pest controller is wearing an orange pesticide container

International dog food awareness week, Richard Hammond speaking

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. Richard Hammond, a white man with grey floppy hair wearing a blue button up shirt smirks whilst holding a phone to either ear. He is wearing a blue wrist watch. Below this a small ginger dog is curled up in a bowl.

The images are visually striking, funny and varied in style – reflecting the humour and creativity that it so often present in the tics themselves. Every time I entered a tic and clicked the generate button I was filled with excitement as the software made sense of the words and worked its magic to bring them to life.

Nine times out of ten I laughed out loud the moment the results appeared on screen. The algorithm seems to do a pretty decent job of finding the key objects or people (e.g. Batman, the building blocks of life, a cat called Barbara Windsor etc) within each tic. The simpler locations (e.g. my pocket and the garden) are clearly represented. The algorithm has a good go at visualising the more complex locations, but these tend to end up as scenes that are less specific than the original location suggested by the tic. For example, ‘a pastry shop in Leeds’ becomes a pastry shop and ‘Antiques Roadshow’ becomes a general bidding scene or shelves in an otherwise nondescript shop.

I also experimented with generating artwork from tics that didn’t follow the object-location format suggested by OpenAI. When presented with more surreal or abstract concepts, the software still finds recognisable visual references as the basis for the artwork. However, it’s safe to say that the more abstract the tic, the more abstract the artwork. Here are a couple of examples:

Don’t overreact God, it’s only original sin!

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A white man lying in the cross position on a red carpet with a green spiral design. He is in a blue loin cloth. Above this is a partially visible large crimson cross. Some illegible text in black. Sitting to the left of the crimson cross is a small wooden end table with a blue bowl on the table top.

Don’t overreact God, it’s only original sin!

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A blue Jesus figure sits next to a blue chalice. In the foreground of the image to the left of the Jesus figure is an amber cross with black script and markings dotted on it.

Tortellini Tortoise and the Great Bucket Famine of Forty-Four

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A dark rendering of a tortoise in a chalk style painting. Parts of the tortoise have fluorescent dashes of colour.

Tortellini Tortoise and the Great Bucket Famine of Forty-Four

An AI generated image by Dall E Mini of a tic from the Touretteshero archive. A golden lit image of a giant yellow tortoise with big deep yellow markings in its shell.

Having spent some time with DALL·E 2 over the past few months, the more surreal and abstract AI generated artworks are often my favourite.

One final bit of good news is that from September 2022 the DALL·E 2 software is free to use without a waiting list and from November 2022 you can integrate DALL E into your own apps and products through a new application programming interface (API). So if you’re interested to explore DALL·E 2 further, head to the OpenAI website.

We’re excited to see and hear more about how disabled and neurodiverse people are experimenting with creative software like DALL·E 2. These tools offer a brand new way to explore and bring to life the complexities of our minds, bodies, language and experiences.

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