Short story: Robarthe and the Art Robbery
Year: April 2023
Production period: 8 months
Role: Writer, Generator, Designer
Mentor: Prof. Tom Day and Prof. Ilse Schweitzer
Description: "Robarthe and the Art Robbery” is a short story focusing on the relationship between technology and arts while illustrating inquiries about the border of creativity.
Award: First-place award in Exhibit category at UURAF
"With every step, a thousand questions without answers pop into his head. Do they need him to protect and curate those things, the artworks generated by machine? Does he need to tell those machines what to do to not harm themselves? They are still and spiritless. Yet they are not the same as any artifacts in other museums. Those items displayed here are far more dangerous and insane than what an ordinary human can think of. And humans scarcely inquire about the hidden threats of this AI museum."
- Chapter 1, Robarthe and the Art Robbery
Inspiration
Inspired by the classical novel "Frankenstein" written by Mary Shelley, this story is a bridging thought about the relationship between technology, creativity and humans. Besides the basic idea about the dangers of the uncontrolled creative ability of humans in science, this story expands the understanding of the conflicts in the interactivity between art and the capability of technologies to imitate different kinds of art. The fundamental premise of the story is that I believe art is not merely defined but actually could be refined by any intelligence, no matter whether it is natural or artificial intelligence.
Creative Process
Writing: The story was written for the Honors Option of the class MI201 about media and information based on the basic idea about the dangers of humans’ uncontrolled creative ability in science. However, the idea has been developed to achieve more profound insights about addressing conflicts in how technology can imitate and replace arts. I first drafted a general outline as an 'instruction' for long-term writing. Nonetheless, a lot of details has been shifted and changed within the interaction of the characters. For future development, I also tried to apply yet not much effective in the power of Chat GPT.
Generating: The unique factor of this project was the combination of AI art and my skills in editing during the creative process. Besides the story I wrote, there are five graphic images created by the AI program Mid-Journey through my input sentences and editing skill to be more compatible with the story. Moreover, the story features a short poem written by a browser to navigate the structure of the plot.
Designing: Even though Midjourney supported me in generating graphic images based on my prompt, I still need to modify the image on Photoshop for a better cohesive and coherent visual.
Challenges
1. Writing a story in English as an International student.
2. Combining scientific and artistic style to make the story more interesting.
3. Capturing photos in low-light environment.
4. Doing research thoroughly on the topic of technology and innovation.
5. Creating the consistency between graphic images and each story chapter.
Lessons
1. Deadline motivates the writers at some point.
2. Be opened to change.
3. Investment in time and effort is needed for arts.
4. Hard-skill: writing, AI generating with effective prompt, graphic designing.
5. Make things interesting to learn.
Future Inquiries
1. Other tools that can make reading experience more unique?
2. Could there be universe for Robarthe (i.e. part 2 of the story)?
Reference Hashtag
#AI_generation
#Frankenstein
