The beautiful thing about art is that it is the mere exploration and expression of one’s creativity—like peeling back the layers and peering into one’s mind. Another beautiful thing about art is that it's not confined to just one medium, or a certain set of tools. Most recently, we’ve seen the coalition of art and technology. Art has evolved exponentially since its inception, and having artificial technology is a game changer.
Alper Yesiltas is an artist, lawyer, and photographer based in Istanbul who ventured into AI art. In a collection titled As if Nothing Happened, Yesiltas uses AI to show what deceased celebrities, historical figures, and global icons would look like today if they were still alive today.
When Yesiltas released the first set of his collection two months ago, he gained a lot of traction from art social media accounts and tech-based accounts such as @metav3rse on Instagram.. With hitting over 17K views on Boredpanda.com and being a featured artist page for the website, everyone took notice.
Yesiltas was able to showcase celebrities like Freddie Mercury (lead vocalist of Queen), Heath Ledger (Hollywood Actor), Janis Joplin (American singer), and many more with each post having the words “I wish” followed by the reason for their death. For example, with Freddy Mercury, Yestilas captioned “I wish he hadn’t got that disease.”
Throughout the post, Yestilas adds various inspirations and excitement that he used to create this collection. He says that “When I started tinkering with technology, I saw what I could do and thought what would make me the happiest.” Though messing with technology and coding, the inspiration to use this AI was difficult, until he says that “I wanted to see some of the people I missed again in front of me…” he would get the inspiration to use that idea to create this wonderful collection.
While using many different software programs, Yestilas would come across the difficulties of the creative process. He’ll know when he’s done when the image looks photorealistic as if it were taken by a photographer today.
Yestilas talks about the continuation of this project. He says that “I want to do it in a selective way, so the process is a little bit slow for me.” What this means is that though this project might be hard and tedious, having selective icons wouldn’t be out of the question. He later hopes that for future projects, he will be using his real-life pictures and AI technology to mix and create projects such as "Life in 2050" or "Alternate Museums.
On November 15, two months after Yestilas released his first collection, Yesiltas released his second collection titled Thisness. This collection consists of historical icons on what they would look like if they lived in our time.
Yestilias includes historical icons like Rosa Parks (American Activist), Charlie Chaplin (Actor, composer, and filmmaker), Alexander Hamilton (American Founding father), and many more.
Throughout the article, he mentions that is able to add small details to reflect his own perspective, and he is very passionate about the new AI-generated image that can be created.
Today with over 500K views on the original post and nearly 10k views on his second collection, Alper Yestilas's art is something people should not glance over. My personal favorite piece in this collection is Paul Walker. After watching the entirety of the Fast and Furious franchise over the years since I was a kid, Paul Walker was always my favorite character because he took a lot of risks for the sake of his family, which was inspiring to me growing up. When I learned the news of his passing from a tragic car accident in 2013, it broke my heart. Yestila's art struck a chord with me because it shows what Walker would look like today.
I’m excited to see where AI-based art can go. Even though AI is still evolving today, its conjunction with art is here to stay. I would love to see where Alper Yestilas takes his future AI collection from here on.
“As if Nothing Happened” https://www.boredpanda.com/ai-images-of-celebrities-as-if-nothing-happened-to-them-alper-yesiltas/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
“Thisness”
Alper Yestilas Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alperyesiltas/
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