The Intelligent Machines Revolution

Probably. The recent launch of technologies like OpenAI’s Sora (video generation model) signals a paradigm shift in the creative landscape, wherein the art of simulation might become something other than just art. In their own words, “Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.” 

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Surely, increasingly more people will want to know what it might mean for a machine to understand them and how things exist in the world. It might become a fight to free creativity and claim ownership over the artistic process altogether. Or, it might be that machine intelligence could become a valuable collaborator, allowing us to expand our minds as creators and explore new layers in artistic philosophy.

Inside the craft of Jean Jacques Balzac: architecture meets AI

To investigate the matter, we spoke to Jean, whose real name decided to keep secretly locked behind the scenes (for the sake of art). He told us that Jean Jacques Balzac (JJB) was born out of boredom and sheer curiosity. From exploring the temporality and beauty of architectural construction to how architecture might be reinvented to accommodate more-than-human perspectives - Jean explores it all within this enigmatic project. 

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Behind the fictional character of JJB lies the collaborative effort between a human mind and a generative artificial intelligence system. Here, the element of boredom might catch people by surprise when learning that the means to satisfy Jean’s curiosity were made by his phone alone. He uses text-to-image generative AI tools to create what he calls “wrong architecture illustrations.” 

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"The closer an image gets to reality, the more a spectator can relate to what they see.” Jean states, though, “What is essential is to keep at least one aesthetic element out of sync and in opposition to all the others, stretching or deforming it to the point by which the structure of its reality starts breaking.”

Provoking dialogue and embracing imperfection

Through Jean’s approach, the aesthetic potential of the image is harnessed as a rational illusion, meaning it is viewed as likely real but not quite, wherein lines and shapes appear to maintain their normal attributes. In his work, Jean wants to explore and experiment with pure gestures in architecture. All images have a soft sci-fi edge, post-apocalyptic, and almost ephemeral quality: it is hard to define them.

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He asks: “What does it mean to build, create, or leave a trace as a human within a natural environment? Human-made gestures are “superimposed” on the environment, sometimes the organic is transformed into an abstract artificial shape, and other times it is the composition of the object that confronts the natural setting. In other words, these mutations foster a provocation for dialogue between visual elements.

In this context, architecture is transformed into an object of contemplation, akin to site-specific installations that act as aesthetic objects in their own right, occasionally devoid of deliberate functionality. JJB thinks that “even though there are certain rules in the ways buildings should behave or look like, variations are much more possible and even welcome in architecture than variations in, let’s say, the presentation of people.

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Bringing imperfections in the creation of images by a machine is actually helpful to create iterations of existing models that go beyond the human mind.” This quality of imperfection is what makes them contemplative, embracing a Wabi-Sabi-like philosophy to design. Thus, for JJB the question is rather, how can the 'wrong' in architecture become an object of 'desire and contemplation'

The uncanny valley: a desire for irregularity

Typically, beauty is what makes the eye attentive and selective within our surroundings. However, when things function seamlessly or ‘work as they should’, they often fade into the background, leading to a tendency to forget their presence altogether. On the other hand, when something deviates from our cultural or social “canons”— when it does not fit into what we consider ‘in the right place’ — we are paradoxically drawn to it with greater presence than we might expect. This “irregularity” or “reality signal” prompts us to confront what is before us with heightened awareness, challenging our assumptions and demanding a deeper engagement with our immediate reality.

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To achieve this paradoxical effect, JJB uses Midjourney. This generative text-to-image AI tool has already been trained on a large amount of data. Whenever prompted with a specific text, it generates variants conforming to their patterns, while also introducing some level of variation. The latter is what Jean usually looks for, “the uncanny spot.” This is linked to the choice of the word “wrong,” which has something to do with the erroneous nature of the subject/object seen in the image. An example of this is Jean’s Dreaming Pantheon in Rome. The image represents “the original interior of the Pantheon in Rome with a cassette ceiling transformed into the exterior facade of a cylindrical building.” The rendering was done in a timeframe of seconds and with shocking precision.

Increasing artistic intelligence through technology

Exploring the uncanniness in the way Jean does deconstructs our perspective on architecture from a double point of view: the human and the technological. The AI, then, becomes a tool to see beyond the conventional, altering rendering techniques and ways of thinking through compositional logic that could not be done by the human mind on its own within the given timeframe. In other words: embracing this technology allows us to alter our perception and enhance our conceptual thinking. Collaborating with the tool actually becomes an empowering experience.

When we asked JJB about his relationship to machine intelligence and the role it has in his work, he pointed at the great opportunity it gives him to accelerate the creative process, something between a ”super-fast ideation tool and Pinterest on acid.” He also mentioned being “in full control of the artistic process.” 

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But how can anyone be in full control of something that relies on a high level of variation and randomness after each new iteration? Maybe, how we will interact with machines in the future to create artworks will mimic this randomness in our thoughts about the world in general. And maybe, we will find out that our view has actually always been like this.

JJB shows that intelligent technologies not only cause an acceleration in the creative process itself, but also a gradual embodiment of a deeper level of speculative thinking. The seemingly bland combination of conflicting elements in most of his work reflects the underlying interconnectedness of the elements found in the real world, but with a stretch. For Jean, deciding whether a certain image is real or not, is left to the viewer.