Photographer and GAN artist creating futuristic worlds by combining the two mediums. Chazz has been clean and sober for 8 years and is also a recovery counselor. He minted his first NFT on the Tezos blockchain in February 2021.
GAN stands for generative adversarial network, which is the original AI code working in datasets. He said that he uses AI as a tool and that his images always start with a photograph.
He gets inspiration from waking up every day. He had a near-death experience 13 years ago. Once he healed, he decided to be creative every day, and that led to consistency in his life and his art. He was inspired to start a 100 NFTs in 100 days challenge, where he mints 1 NFT a day, and he uses the revenue from them to buy back NFTs from upcoming artists.
The strongest influence on his work comes from his dreams, his life, and the cyberpunk novels of his childhood. He creates these psychedelic, visionary NFTs for his future self to live in.
I wanted to know about his process and which AI programs he uses. He uses both mid-journey and stable diffusion. He starts with one of his photographs and then tells the AI to use .35% or less of the image. Then he uses verbal prompts to get the futuristic images, then he edits in photoshop.
We discussed the artist-as-collector economy and whether it is sustainable. He said yes it is, and that spending part of his NFT sales to support his community was a way to take care of his community. Those communities are Nabu, Kato Krew, and Cisco & Dominic.
His favorite artist is Michael Parkes, a magical, realist painter.
His favorite color is periwinkle.
If he could change 1 thing in the NFT ecosystem it would be to have a change in the cliques of the early adopters.
He is currently working on 2 new projects; The Star Seed Chronicles and Neon Pagans. The Star Seed Chronicles will tell a story from the 1st image to the last. Neon Pagans are going to be dark and moody.
The message he wants people to get from his work is that, “we are not alone in the universe, there is a higher state of consciousness and that we need to evolve to get there”.
Listen to the full podcast here!