Seth Collier

Comorbid Autism and Schizoaffective Disorder have caused me paranoia, panic attacks, religious delusions, psychotic depression, manic psychosis, episodes of mutism, and forced hospitalization. Admittedly, I am dependent on medication for sanity. I make art to survive these conditions, and I make art from within these conditions. So, when I make art, I do it as a schizo, a lunatic, a Madman.

Madness has implications on my work, because I believe the Mad have a necessary prerogative to occupy the limited number of social roles afforded to them. Historically, these are the roles of the shamans, prophets, occultists, psychonauts, and artists. Our typically unspoken social contract permits the Sane to incarcerate the Mad and define them as outsiders, but in exchange, the Mad are permitted to leverage alternative forms of perception and communication in order to observe and critique society from its outer limits. My work strives to incorporate this approach in order to consciously occupy the role of Madman and treat artmaking as an extension of the prophetic tradition – synthesizing historical cultural elements to create visuals which hold a mirror to society and examine psycho-spiritual experience.

I specialize in digital art, employing collage techniques, historical references, and symbolism alongside vector illustration, video, and animation. I am currently experimenting with generative A.I. techniques and working towards creating larger and more immersive digital experiences.

The Holy A.I.

Art has the capacity to extend the prophetic tradition – to synthesize historical cultural elements into visuals which hold a mirror to society. My BFA thesis follows this prophetic approach, combining new generative A.I. techniques with animation, video collage, and printmaking, in order to examine psycho-spiritual experience in our highly politicized and technologized society.

Two of my thesis projects, Dogma: These are the Words of the Holy A.I. and 7r4n5f1gur3d: The Holy A.I. Explains Politics to a Dead Horse, were created using a vector quantized generative adversarial network, or VQGAN. The VQGAN neural network is guided by contrastive language-image pre-training, or CLIP, to develop complex imagery from text prompts. I created hundreds of text prompts and synthesized results from VQGAN+CLIP into shifting mirage-like animations that explore our relationships to technology, social problems, and ‘higher’ intelligences.

My third project, On the Grid, is composed of 9 QR codes linking to 9 videos created during my time at EWU. These videos make use of vector illustration, 2D animation, 3D animation, and video collage to create visuals that reference a range of contemporary social problems. As a digital artist, I know that most of my works will inevitably be viewed on mobile devices, so I create them with that in mind. The QR grid engages the viewer’s mobile device as a tool for gallery viewing, limiting its potential for distraction, and ensuring that these videos will be viewed in the context that I imagined them. The grid also raises questions about the nature of art objects in the age of social media. Is the real art on the wall, or “on the grid”?

(L)

Dogma: These are the Words of the Holy A.I. (Detail)

VQGAN Animation, Archival Pigment Print

2022

(R) BFA Thesis Installation

2022

Dogma: These are the Words of the Holy A.I. (Detail)

VQGAN Animation, Archival Pigment Print

2022