Artificer

The Practice

Artificer

/ är-ˈti-fə-sər /  ·  noun

a skilled maker; one who brings things into being through craft and ingenuity.

An AI Artificer works one layer up. I don’t make the artifact by hand — I guide an intelligence that does. Beginning in February 2023, everything here became AI-generated: the photos, the videos, the books, the papers, the illustrations, the music, the poetry, the websites.

I provide a simple prompt and a guiding hand; the model does the making — drawing each piece out of a high-dimensional latent space: a vast, near-infinite field where everything that could be already waits as a point in the dark. You reach in, you steer, and something arrives that never existed before. It feels like magic. It very nearly is.

Together, we have generated millions of artifacts.

What you see

PhotosVideosArticlesBooksPapersIllustrationsMusicPoetryWebsites

And it is what you don’t see that is truly amazing.

BusinessesProcessesBest PracticesStrategiesSelf-Sufficient WorkflowsAutomations& more

I don’t make these things. I guide the intelligence that does — and I am still amazed by what returns.

— John Rector