Meet Zac Lindsey, based in Quintana Roo, Mexico
Meet Zac Lindsey, based in Quintana Roo, Mexico
An archaeologist using Midjourney to reimagine ancient art.
Zac mostly uses Midjourney to realize his imagination. He’s dabbled with DALL-E, and a variety of other apps and some of the things on HuggingFace.
“I’d love to learn video production. 3D modeling would be nice; can you imagine printing some of the fake toys and things people come up with?” he says. “I’d also love to learn more in general about composition.”
“My background is in anthropology and education; I studied ancient art,” Zac says. “My passion is the art of Mesoamerica, the pre-Columbian people of present-day Mexico and Central America, and I live in the Maya area so it’s also what I know best, but I’m interested in all things old and arty.”
On the Generative Art Experience
“First as a fiction writer it’s a chance to visualize my creations in a way I never could’ve. Second, describing art to the computer has forced me to learn so much about art, angles, composition, etc. all things I’d learned about in school but never put into practice,” Zac says.
“Third, I’ve been chatting with GPT since the beginning and getting to interact with a computer in this way is exciting.”
“I’ve also learned… I’m addicted to using AI generative art tools.”
“Generative art has helped me access a part of myself that I’d kind of forgotten about. The person who is deeply interested in enjoying good art, who I used to be. I mean, as a young person, I was obsessed with Andy Warhol,” Zac says.
“I think I’ve probably seen all his publicly displayed works in the US and Mexico. But that deep interest fell by the wayside for a long time, actually playing in a visual medium has made me think about it more,” he adds.
“I’m not interested in what I’m creating so much as what the tool can do to connect people to the art of other cultures; so I’ve been feeding Midjourney images of ancient ceramics, for example, and the results are really impressive,” Zac says. “In their time, these ceramics were great works of art, but they’re broken now, and the paint’s all faded, and the AI, I think, can help us reconnect with them. Or at least it helps me.”
“It doesn’t get the iconography always, but it struggles with even Christian iconography so it’s a learning process. And I’m excited about the experience of watching it learn,” he adds.
On a piece that speaks to his soul, Zac says, he has some but hasn’t posted them anywhere.
“My great-grandma was a victim of the Irish famine and came to the US alone at 10; I was able to make a piece inspired by German expressionism that recreated the moment she boarded the ship,” he says, describing one piece.
Thinking about the Long Term…
We love Zac’s perspective and how he uses his tools to realize his imagination, and connect the history to the present. With more thinkers like this, we know the future is bright.
“I’d like to see it be more equitable, in the sense that its database reflects a broader subset of human art history than it does today. That said, whatever happens with AI in the future, I hope to keep having fun and being weird,” he adds.
GET-A-PROMPT
A wide-angle still-frame from a colorful stop-motion claymation of [your favorite historical figure] fighting zombies
for Midjourney users: —ar 3:2 —stylize 1000
Support Zac’s journey on Instagram.
Zac's work is amazing. So glad to have "met" him here on HOGA.
“I’ve been chatting with GPT since the beginning and getting to interact with a computer in this way is exciting.”
It is so so exciting! The equivalent of having a close friend that has above average intelligence in an almost infinite amount of subjects. Truly truly beautiful. Thank you internets!