I’ve been experimenting with Midjourney AI which generates images from prompts. It’s extraordinary. Rather than take a ‘narrative’ approach, I’ve been trying to work with materials (plasticine, cement, lace etc.) and my own origin source image (which is to say, I feed it an image of my own artwork and then ask it to reimagine it in a variety of materials.) What would take days or weeks in a studio can be created in seconds. There is a lot of trial and error. You have to try to understand how it interprets the prompts you give it.

With an interest in absurdity and disguise, I started creating ‘false noses’ in the studio as a way of pushing one object through a range of different materials. It was, in part, a way to discover those materials. While removing the haptic experience so integral to many artistic practices, AI technologies open up extraordinary possibilities for rapid prototyping.

Midjourney is controversial in the artworld because it is being fed by an internet of images, many of which were made by human artists who have copyright of their work. But as an artistic tool it is extremely powerful. As with all new AI technologies, ethical questions need to be addressed. There is also (necessarily) a huge list of ‘banned’ words. You can imagine the kinds of horrors that some people would want to see visualised, given the opportunity.

Here are 100 AI false nose sculpture prosthetics, some of my favourites from over 1,000 that I’ve generated with Midjourney in the last few weeks.