Experimental AI — an evolving space where art meets artificial intelligence, where curiosity is explored, and where I share the research, trials, and triumphs, from integrating AI into my creative practice.

Why “Experimental”?

Because every iteration is a test. Every prompt, model choice, and output is an experiment. In this space I document both exciting and unsettling — you’re partly steering the process, but you’re also handing over some control to the machine, which can lead to unexpected outcomes. Over time, this becomes a map of my own creative inquiry into AI — not as a tool to replace, but as a collaborator, as a provocation, as a mirror.

A Guiding Thought

The “art” in “artificial” reminds us that intelligence (even synthetic) is, ultimately, shaped, chosen, curated. There’s no escape from the human, from the aesthetic, from the gesture. My work explores that boundary: where the algorithmic form and meaning emerge together. By sharing not only the successes but also the stumbles, my hope is to invite dialog, provoke reflection, and co-creation.

Prickly Purple (2018) — created as part of my Cultivation series of coral-inspired material sculptures. I often return to earlier works like this to develop animations for testing purposes and to explore technical limitations. These earlier pieces provide a valuable foundation for experimenting with new ideas using my own practice as the starting point.

Nerds (2018)— also part of the Cultivation series — takes the same coral-inspired exploration into new territory. Nerds began as a physical sculpture into what I call a ‘Squish it AI ‘ : a small, playful experiment with AI that I could press, stretch, and reshape, much like clay.

The idea of a ‘seed’ is important here — it’s the first spark of something that can be grown, tested, and transformed. By squishing, layering, and reworking the AI outputs, I treat them as raw material, not finished products. This process allows me to blend the digital with the physical, keeping the experimental spirit of the series alive.

The Uga – 2024

This short animation grew out of a previous digital art project where I experimented with using my own illustrations as the foundation for AI-generated movement. For this piece, I took two illustrations and put them through another AI program to test how well it could generate animation from supplied images.

The result is a playful, simple animation that captures the essence of the Uga while also showing the limitations and possibilities of the tool. By starting with my own artwork, I could prompt the AI to work within my visual language, rather than relying solely on machine-generated imagery.

These kinds of tests are important to my practice — they allow me to understand where the technology struggles, where it surprises, and how it might be integrated with more traditional processes to create hybrid works.

Uga 1

Another digital illustration inspired by Niue’s myth and legend of Mataginifale and the whale. I combined this with the illustrations of the Uga to create an animation, using it as a test to explore different outcomes.

Uga 2 – Interesting outcome with a cheeky little fish at the end.