My trip to Peru
An A.I. morality play
I had become severely ill in June of 2022. I also had just been granted access to Dall•E 2. I had time, weird feelings and a toy that made everything I had ever done look like scratching symbols in the sand.
I started the “Perudox” gramplay by accident. I had just left the hospital after almost dying from ketoacidosis. I was diabetic. I had never been before, but this was my new normal.
Oh, also my boss just died and his wife was in the ER for a heart attack.
Again, I had some time on my hands.
I had made some experiments with an earlier version of Dall•E. It was very fun and I will actually miss it's sloppy nature. We forget that part of what can make an image compelling is the fuzzy bits, the confused moments, the abstractions. Dall•E 2 was way more believable to the human eye, and it is with a holy terror I wait for the future of A.I. image and video.
I was just having fun.
I had been making Dall•E make me art studios in different wild areas. The Grand Canyon, near a volcano, etc. The photos were pretty good, believable but boring. Then I told Dall•E to make me an image from an artist studio at the top of Machu Picchu. It was like a dream. The images were so perfect and beautiful.
I had the blessing of going to Peru my senior year of highschool. I climbed Machu Picchu just as I was starting my new life as an individual. It opened up so much of my world to travel then, and I will always be grateful to my Lita who took me along.
The A.I. images were insane. If you looked closely it fell apart, but unexamined, it was beautiful.
I have used Instagram for a while to inhabit my persona as an artist. I don't care what your opinion is, Instagram is where art as has been happening. Maybe it's falling off now, but the decade leading up to the pandemic and during the pandemic, Instagram was a democratically available way most people experienced the plastic arts, as problematic as that is.
I posted them as a lark, cropping out the Dall•E color bar (this is a violation of the terms of use and I have since lost that account). The post was accompanied by a brief “Excited about this residency, feeling very blessed.”
No explanation needed.
This post got more likes than anything I had done in a while. People were so lovely. I was feeling a way about it. I had almost just died and was feeling alone and isolated. It breathed life back in to my soul. Only problem, is, it wasn't true.
-
I was discovered passed out, my breathing short. I luckily was able to be woken up and taken to a clinic. I literally couldn’t breathe enough. I was dying. We assumed it was Covid or something like that, but when given oxygen it did nothing. The people at the clinic panicked and sent us to the E.R.
You should never explain a joke while you're telling it. But tragedy, the explanations help soften the tumble. They can give more time to reflect.
The clinic told us to go to the hospital immediately. A quick Uber over and into the E.R. after this point everything became a blur. Except one moment. The doctor shoved his finger in my ass. Did I mention that I had told him I hadn't shit in several days and was severely constipated? Anyway, that was the only moment of clarity, I just couldn't get enough air. I was drowning.
They figured out it was ketoacidosis, and pulled me back to the land of the living. Huge and painful injections of potassium too. I had a blood sugar levels over 800. The ideal range I was told is between 70 and 180. I was in the ICU for several days. When I left, if I ate a single cracker my blood sugar would spike 30 points. I needed regular injections of insulin now. I was a diabetic.
I pleaded with the hospital to let me leave early. I had organized a show of some artists work, and I didn't want to disappoint. I had a painting by John Hinckley Jr. in the show, for crying out loud. Important show!
I had not been a diabetic before. But I had been getting pretty fat.
I had also recently been in a documentary about the artworld and a little after-party for a IFC screening was supposed to be at the show. I wanted to knit together the worlds. All the artists in that show make phenomenal art. It was an important show, at least in my small world. It kept me going when all I wanted to do was die.
My whole world again had changed, I had ruined my body, apparently.
-
The high of seeing so many people sending me love for a fake accomplishment gave me a respite from the grief, and a banquet for my dark humor at the irony of life. I didn't want to tell people about my diabetes. I have spent a lot of time in the hospital and it can quickly become the only thing people want to talk to you about. Blech. I hate hospitals.
People were so sweet but also a few people knew it was fake immediately. I still have some faith left in humanity. But, overwhelming this was an exercise in seeing people's love and appreciation.
But what to post next?
I could have just kept posting all the other random amazing things Dall•E was making for me. But I kept playing with Machu Picchu. I have a lot of silly images. Then I made one that, I felt, was iconic. Machu Picchu on fire at night. It seemed relevant. The threatening fires had been nearby recently. But I didn't really know how to get from A to B. I had to figure out how a smart ass like me would end up burning down one of the most sacred sites in the world.
I finally decided to be absurd. If I posted the next image as a total absurdity I could continue a fantastical narrative feeling I tilted my brim enough to not be held liable in the event I crossed some line.
The image was of a furry, a person in an animal suit, and a hockey jersey, holding a torch, walking around the art museum in Lima. Captioned “Learning a lot about this part of the world from a very special guide”.
It flew under the radar. No one questioned it.
I felt absolved. I started to imagine what my days would be like. What would I do in the morning versus at night. What was the weather in Peru? When did the sun rise and when was it setting. It was slow, annoying even. Mundane images of bad paintings being made at the top of one of the wonders of the world. Only in retrospect did people actually notice most of the paintings were of Machu Picchu on fire.
My friend Sebastian Alvarez, himself from Peru, waxed with me about his country. He told me how Machu Picchu takes all the spotlight, and sometimes he wishes it would just burn down. I was a demon, giddy.
The first indiscretion had to be intentional. In this alternate world, I found some red mud, and as a bad art residency art project, I painted some ruins with the mud. Definitely a “no-no”. After I posted that, a Peruvian lady I met on Tinder, naturally got upset and insisted to know who I got permission from to do this. I told her “art needed no permission”. She wasn't happy.
It set the tone.
-
I basically cut carbs out of my diet completely, because the amount of insulin I would have to take was so high, it just wasn't worth it, my only method was self injection and stick and test. From childhood, I was used to being a pin cushion, but this was a new level. I had zero energy, my near vision gone, numbness in my feet and total depression.
We had been working on this table at work, before I and everyone else got sick. Over nine feet long. Blue. The painter kept messing up. Over spraying it, under spraying it. Each time it had to be sanded back to smooth.
The sudden onset of illness of my boss made me feel I had to work harder, for his sake. The dark blue dust piled up every day, fans blowing it around.
-
The next big indiscretion had to be worse, but accidental. In an apparent plein air mishap, I have spilled oil paint and trudged it around the sacred site. The caption: “Having a bad morning”.
I later painted a small smiley on the stones of Machu Picchu, with zero outcry. Then several Ukrainian flags. No reaction.
People, were bored. Good.
-
I had made a book in 2009 about orchids, a compilation of tweets about orchid facts, which Health MGMT produced into a print series and book run.
Orchids 1-147
There's a few copies floating around. Anyway, all the facts were total fabrication. People, being told they were a fabrication, still wanted to believe them. Orchids, for me became a metaphor for false truths. We try to grow then, fragile, never too much or too little, but mostly we watch them die, or never bare the flower we wanted.
-
I needed to find some orchids in Peru. I fabricated some market scenes, odd and disturbed piles in the streets, eventually leading to orchid vendors.
But how to use them? When I actually went to Peru in 2000, there was a fascination with gold, because tourists used to come to hear about the gold. The lust of the conquistador still brings bodies.
I saw so many gold vessels when I was there, I wanted to have beautiful flower arrangements in gold vessels. A few sentences later I had all my gold vases and magenta orchids; a tribute to Huayna Capac, who was a notable leader of the area with a love of peace. I shot of the backroom with all the gold vessel storage cinched it.
Small descriptions would shift tone and each thing Dall•E 2 gave me helping me understand how to better talk to it.
I couldn't resist, I had to “paint” them too.
I loved the way Dall•E 2 did gold. It looked old, and heavy. I had simulated a little gold earlier, but now I felt confident in getting weird with it. I created so many different gold forms, and from there “went” to the “Museum of the Rainbow Gold”. It was a collection of some absolutely bizarre material interaction, probably impossible, but shockingly beautiful. I really liked how Dall•E 2 made things look in a museum. It gave good variety. It blows me away.
The technology works very well with established tropes. Objects in a museum is a genre and a simulated depth of field, plexiglass reflections, etc. and almost any object is believably in a museum space.
I spent my time in grad school trying to reinvent the lost culture of the Taino in Cuba. We don't really have any artifacts from the Cuban Taino, so I wanted to make them. Now I could populate a whole museum in an afternoon.
I had to invent more artifacts and make more museums. I settled on love as a theme and created vaguely new-world looking sculptures of people hugging. So many were so incredible, I had to keep posting. I posted 40 images from “The Museum of the Eternal Hug”. Of the images from this project, these are my personal favorite. I'm doing a print series with them.
This got some peoples attention too, the numbers on Instagram bumped up. Rituals, rites, historical sites, universities, feasts, museums, mansions, caves, yoga and art collectors. I was having a full life, in the minds of my more gullible friends. My fellow cynics all a tizzy.
Then the fateful day. Museum in the morning, then a mystic reads my fortune… she says to avoid flames. A studio visit and then a collector's house for some refreshments. Then, in this world, I consume some sort of plant thing that some old woman with gloves has prepared. Is it ayahuasca? Cocaine? Who knows. Clearly I'm stoned. I go back to the site at night and I'm painting the ruins.
Now people are becoming upset.
The next day starts like nothing happened, a visit to a museum. But some image of some people in a dark room looking upset and now I'm in trouble.
Americans are so used to TV presenting something with every fact. A recreation, an artist rendering, live footage, etc.
Any “image" and a few sentences, you do the rest. Dada.
People who are bad at lying always want to describe everything, but as with most things, less is more. People believe better those things they piece together themselves, even if it's insane.
People want to believe.
We need to believe.
I'm just one of many assholes taking advantage of this, but I also believe this is the sacred fertile ground of artists and shaman. The agreement between belief and reality must regularly be challenged and improved.
My friend Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.) contacted me at this point and we had an incredible discussion about social media, envy, art, culture and what we believe. He came to see it for what it was and took it's meaning to heart. Hearing him understand this piece, more than anything in recent memory, has made me feel like I'm not just shouting into a void.
-
Well now me and my Peruvian keepers scrambled to clean the site before more powerful officials arrive. We see several fifty-five gallon drums of turpentine arrive for the oil cleanup.
Several post detailing the cleaning efforts and my self effacing is still not strong enough to squash my artist wonder. The colors of the running paint are beautiful, no?
I am seeing nothing but disbelief and hatred, for good reason. After a beat, some skeptics arrive, unable to find anything in the news. But by then it's too late. Two people, bless them, repost it in an attempt to pile on the punishment. Name calling and character assassination seemingly insignificant against the charge of defacing Machu Picchu. Many people are in stitches.
A dealer friend comments:
Did u graffiti on the ruins? am confused!
I reply:
graffiti has negative connotations, I used oil paint. See my previous post.
Now a small plume of smoke on the other side of the ruins. It grows. Nothing can be done. Fire runs up hill. As the sun sets, finally those month old images of Machu Picchu on fire come out. Everything becomes panic. Avoid flames.
I messaged Sebastian, “Be careful what you wish for”.
The hatred has become a monster. Instagram reels and stories about what a horrible no-good, bad artist I am. Little did they know they're more correct than all my friends. People want to believe. Also, it's at this point Instagram offers me some new options as a user. I may not be getting likes, but my engagement is insane.
I realize I'm heading into international incident when my dear friend Sam Jablon offers his brother's assistance, who is in Lima with an aid group. I also had lovely offers from Michael Fleming and Olivia Swider and a few others to get me a lawyer. I am very grateful and will never forget that generosity.
So it's decided, the climax has been overcome. Now I must descend into hell and resurrect. I run into the forest, am stalked by what turns out later to be a black jaguar, who the police also arrest for some reason. Great image of the jaguar being carried outside my window of the rescue helicopter. It's movie magic but slow and dumb. I can't imagine our future.
In court I am not allowed to bring my phone, but I'm posting my limited pallet pastel drawings of the court proceedings. All the drawings are A.I. created and the tale becomes something else.
I'm falling in love with the prosecuting attorney and my attention to the court becomes minimal. The hatred is subsiding. Only my friends are still paying attention. Then my posted drawings show that the jaguar returns, turns me into a pink jaguar and we escape on a plane, the final image, an A.I. rendering of a black jaguar in a airline seat.
I close the curtains and declare the piece finished, while alluding to it's future continuation.
By this time, everyone has moved on, peace again.
-
The paint I kept sanding contained Phthalo Blue, Titanium White and Carbon Black. Usually fine in small doses, I had sanded down over 2 gallons, and the dust was too much for my, my employers and his wife's bodies. Copper, nickel and polyaromatic hydrocarbons knocked out my pancreas. I'm sure the titanium caused my and my employers heart issues. I still haven't seen any resolution on this, my lawyer seems to be stuck. I don't really want to go after a widow. Life is complicated.
They didn't do any of the things they should have, but I feel like an idiot for going along with it. If you know any good toxicologists, please lmk.
Yes, Machu Picchu is a metaphor for my body, sort of.
My ability to produce insulin has returned, though still reduced. My vision has improved and my sensation in my toes has returned. I'm losing weight, and on a journey to find health in my new body. I will need to screen for cancer more regularly, but I think ultimately I must be grateful. Life is precious and I'm lucky to be here.
I owe my life to Lia O'Brien who found me and fought me to take me to get life saving medical treatment. So really, all this is her fault.
I'm going to return to Peru from time to time, so keep an eye out, and be skeptical of anything you read or see these days. I'm just a lone idiot, just imagine what an organized group could accomplish with this kind of technology.
See you on the other side.
