What happens when imagination becomes almost limitless on a planet whose resources are not?

feels like painting with your mind

I get flashes of imagery all of the time. Having the technical ability to make those images visible means I can record them while they are still present in my mind. What might once have existed only as an internal image can become a digital sketch, a real-life visual record of an idea that I can see, evaluate, change, reject, preserve, develop, or eventually make with my own hands.

The technology does not originate the flash of imagery. It gives me another way to catch it.

I can then go about the task of figuring out how to create it. The digital sketch can hold the image while I work out materials, scale, process, fabrication, funding, studio space, collaborators, installation, handwork, or whatever else may be required to bring it into the physical world.

Time passes and my ideas sit.

Running a small independent art business is historically an all-consuming project. I am creating the art while also managing the business, pop-ups and shows, social media, my website and online store, fulfillment, staffing, travel, load-in and load-out, and considerable physical labor. These are jobs that would often be divided among many people, and the list is longer than this.

The consequence is time. I have more images, ideas, projects, dreams, and things I want to explore as an artist than I have hours available to physically execute them.

The digital studio lets me remain creative in the middle of my actual life, while traveling, working, running the business, moving between shows, or whenever an idea suddenly arrives. I can catch it, see it, begin working with it, and keep it alive instead of waiting for ideal conditions.

And then there is the very precious time I have in my physical studio. The digital studio does not replace that time. It allows me to arrive there with ideas that have already been captured and explored, ready for the separate work of making.

Original digital environments

AI may also be used to create original visual environments for my digital works. Rather than reproducing an existing photograph, I may research the landscape, ecology, light, plants, colors, and visual history of a place and use those references to develop an imagined digital landscape.

These images can function like sets, sketches, or constructed environments within the work. I direct their subject, mood, references, and development through an iterative process of making, looking, rejecting, and revising. A generated image is not automatically a finished artwork. Often it is working material that helps me make the next artistic decision.

The Generators are an experiment.

I am actively exploring how making digital art in my digital studio can create something positive while becoming increasingly conscious of its environmental footprint. I am also interested in these extraordinary technological advances and their ability to visually externalize an artist’s mind.

I do not know yet exactly what the answer is. I am making the work in order to find out. But I believe it is possible, with conscious intention and effort.

Can a digital artwork generate intention, participation, connection, awareness, action, or measurable ecological good? Can the studio itself become greener as I learn more about the resources it consumes? Can a technology with real environmental costs be used consciously to create something that gives back?

The experiment is the work.

But possibility comes with responsibility.

Almost everything we do now is connected to computing. AI, storage, hosting, images, video, data, and the infrastructure behind them all have environmental impacts, even when we cannot see them.

If creating and storing all of this digitally contributes to the destruction of the very world that inspires the work, then something is profoundly wrong. Our blue skies, habitats, ecosystems, forests, water, animals, and living world matter more than any digital tool.

I am working regularly with AI itself to research actionable, evidence-based ways to make this practice more responsible: how to reduce environmental impact, what can actually be measured, which tools and partners are doing meaningful work, and how the artwork itself might create positive effects beyond the screen.

This is not an abstract exercise for me. What I learn will determine what happens to my digital studio. If I can establish an appropriate, responsible pathway toward meaningful good, I want to develop and expand it. If I cannot, I am prepared to rethink it substantially or close it.

I am interested in the extraordinary ability of these technologies to help make an artist’s internal imagery visible. But possibility alone is not enough. I want to know whether that possibility can be pursued responsibly.

Quantifiable responsibility

I want this research to remain visible and accountable. Where something can be measured, I want to measure it. Where only an estimate is possible, I want to call it an estimate. Where something remains unresolved, I want to say so.

The research includes cleaner computing, sustainable hosting, energy and resource use, environmental measurement, credible reduction and removal strategies, ecological restoration, conservation, and the people and organizations already working on these questions.

The goal is not to make a vague claim that the studio is “green.” The goal is to document how the practice is changing, what has actually been tried, what worked, what did not, and what still needs to be solved.