Painting with Fire presents a vignette of transformation: the evolution of GANs from 2014 - 2023 seen through the eyes of fire. Using 14 vintage GAN models, Ionson articulates the emergence of synthetic image generation. Ionson explores fire as the quintessence of humanity's relationship to both innovation and destruction, embracing the unexpected abstractions of classic AI as a distinctive aesthetic statement.

GAN (generative adversarial network) technologies were developed by researchers and programmers but then utilized by artists. Though the technology was invented to make the images as realistic as possible, Brd subverts this to use it chaotically and abstractly; the opposite of what the AI researchers had in mind. This project celebrates the innovators and artists who have brought synthetic image generation to life with models such as the aiCAN, DCGAN, Stylegan 1, 2 & 3, bigGan, biGAN, pix2pix, AttnGan and more.
https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire/
a Sovrn Curated release

Painting with Fire: A History in GANs by Bard Ionson

The GAN continues to fight with itself now producing a brighter fire like color palette.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Rutger van der Tas created art with GAN|2019|https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/karakter-6-4514

DCGAN 128 Epoch 36

Uniformity of technology and the raw, untamed essence of fire, symbolizing the paradox of control within the digital flame
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Mattia Cuttini "Back And Forth" exhibition NFTFactory Paris contains multiple GAN created pieces.|2023|https://mattiac.paris/

Elemental Gridlock

Organic spread of fire and ideas, where the glowing veins of progress map out a future written in the language of flames.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Distortion Genius: Brd Ionson, a Singular Artist for a New Age written by William Peaster|2022|https://edition.async.art/blog/distortion-genius-bard-ionson-a-singular-artist-for-a-new-age

Viral Ignition

A vibrant mosaic emerges through DCGANs algorithmic interplay, encapsulating the chaotic beauty of photons in a digital inferno.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Brd Ionson's work called "Battledore" is donated to the Oxford Bodleian Libraries collection and appears in the Alphabets Alive Exhibition. The images from this work were used to train Brds first GAN model used for many early pieces.|2023-2024|https://books-on-books.com/2023/07/09/books-on-books-collection-bard-ionson/

Photonic Resonance

The elemental force of fire is still being deciphered by an evolving algorithm. Each square offers a glimpse into the AI's learning process, displaying a variety of interpretations as it grasps the dynamic nature of flames. From the smoldering ember to the vibrant inferno, this matrix showcases the algorithmic quest to digitally render the life force of fire.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
TokenNDN Wicanhpi Iyotan Win Autumn Cavender using Ai tools in Indigenous glitch art |2021|https://mnartists.walkerart.org/glitching-the-glass-wall-a-conversation-with-autumn-cavender-wilson

Emergent Blaze Matrix

A solitary orb, cradled by the fiery serenade of pixels, evokes a profound meditation on the isolated spark of genesis within the vast digital inferno.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Ture stvdionouveau  Ai art on SuperRare||https://superrare.com/stvdionouveau

GAN Of Fire

Born from a digital kiln of thousands of fiery visages, and two GANs the valley Briganoon appears through the lens of a DCGAN model, the foundational 64-pixel brushstrokes are transformed into the valley into the town.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks" & Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data Xintao Wang, Liangbin Xie, Chao Dong, Ying Shan 2021 https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10833
Daniel Ambrosi Dreamscapes|2016|https://www.danielambrosi.com/Dreamscapes-Portal

Briganoon Valley

The computer lights the control board as the circuits engage to compute the trajectory. Early training patterns.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Journey With Ai - artist: illa_2020|2019|https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/journey-with-ai-5099

Computing Firing Range

Echoing the hand-stitched quilts of old, this matrix presents a digital reinterpretation where each segment offers a unique blend of pixels and patterns. The subtle shifts in color and texture suggest a larger narrative crafted by the algorithm"s own "hand", reflecting the diverse outcomes of generative processes. This is early in the training of fire as the algorithm is learning the shape of fire.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Fountain Remix Brd Ionson - Innovation of GAN toilets and remixing art.|2020|https://fountain-art.com

Cybernetic Quilt

An inkblot of fire on the canvas of perception, this image invites interpretation, a Rorschach test set ablaze, where each viewer may find their own truth flickering within the flames. So is it utopia or dystopia?
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
StyleGAN 1 - Karras, Tero; Laine, Samuli; Aila, Timo (June 2019). "A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks". https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/cvpr.2019.00454
NVIDIA introduced StyleGAN in 2018, which represented a major advancement in the field of computer-generated imagery. StyleGAN significantly improved the quality and resolution of generated images, leading to hyper-realistic results. This technology became widely known for its ability to generate highly detailed human faces.|June 2019|https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/cvpr.2019.00453

Eutopia or Distopia

A patchwork of passion and pixels that breathes life into the embers of creation, stirring deep with each golden hue and smoldering silhouette.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
The Books of GANesis: Divine Comedy in Tangled Representations Helena Sarin|Nov 2019|https://www.artxcode.io/journal/helena-sarin-celebrating-the-original-gancomic

Genesis of the Artificial Inferno

Epoch 33 the model drives into purple patterns the dark energy surrounding fire as it is often photographed in the dark. To see the light best one must surround it with darkness. Will Ai exist best in the darkest places?
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Anna Ridler, The Fall of the House of Usher II|2017|https://annaridler.com/fall-of-the-house-of-usher-ii

Neurons Fire

At epoch 22 of the training the patterns emerge like smoke and pleasant repeating patterns that reflect the discovery of Fibonacci.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Tom White "Perception Engines" A visual overview examining the ability of neural networks to create abstract representations from collections of real world objects. |2018|https://medium.com/artists-and-machine-intelligence/perception-engines-8a46bc598d57

Ambers

The seed starts the plan to move the algorithm forward tipping it into a different directions.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
AICAN: Creative Adversarial Networks, Generating "Art" by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms June 2017 Ahmed Elgammal, Bingchen Liu, Mohamed Elhoseiny, Marian Mazzone
Brd Ionson exhibited GAN based art Air-Coin-Airdrop & The HODL Frame of North Bay Canada, Kevin Abosch exhibits Expulsion 16.7 (2017),  future adopter of GAN techniques Martin Lukas Ostachowski exhibits multiple pieces. |May 2019| https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0adf0bc748296bcba9f394d783a5f5e9406d6874/9 
https://bardionson.com/exhibitions/#rareaf2

Seed of Form

The learning continues as the generator makes more images and the discriminator judges them as not quite ready.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
Noah GAN artist|2019|https://superrare.com/noah

DCGAN 128 Epoch 20

A lone flame ascends from the virtual kindling, a beacon in the algorithmic night, symbolizing the solitary spark from which boundless digital possibilities are ignited.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
S3GAN - High-Fidelity Image Generation With Fewer Labels Mario Lucic, Michael Tschannen, Marvin Ritter, Xiaohua Zhai, Olivier Bachem, Sylvain Gelly May 2019 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.02271.pdf
High-Fidelity Image Generation With Fewer Labels Mario Lucic, Michael Tschannen, Marvin Ritter, Xiaohua Zhai, Olivier Bachem, Sylvain Gelly May 2019 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.02271.pdf|May 2019|https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.02271.pdf

Lone Flame

the cool essence of azure intertwines with the warm glow of fire, each square a testament to the harmonious contrast within the realm of GAN-created art
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
CycleGAN enabled unpaired image-to-image translation, such as turning horses into zebras or apples into oranges, without needing paired training data. This was a major step forward in practical applications of GANs in image processing and artistic creation. Jun-Yan Zhu, Taesung Park, Phillip Isola, Alexei A. Efros|Mar 2017|https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10593

Azure Infusion

A spectral presence looms within the fiery weave, a subtle nod to legends past, captured in the warm embrace of a digital blaze that paints history with a modern brush
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
CADAF 2020 online showcased these works by Brd, Global Reality, Artificial Artist (Deep Fake Max), Dreams of Internet Dweller Seven, Latent Spacecraft, The Artificial Intelligence Spawns, SAGE Anomaly Redux, Welcome To Earth, Artificial Intelligence Triality, Maximum TV Ratings|2020|https://vimeo.com/435796803