Photos, videos and docs of Don Sutherland, with the keywords: "artificial intelligence"

It's A Crazy World

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Sutherland) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 05:23:04 +0000

A burning globe stands before a background of climate stripes, transforming scientific evidence into a stark visual record of the world’s ongoing warming. Europe glows with dangerous heat, while a thermometer planted over France reads 40°C. In the lower left, fossil fuel infrastructure appears almost toy-like against the scale of planetary disruption: small in form, but immense in consequence. At the right, a pale sculptural figure evokes humanity’s mounting suffering under the pressure of a hotter world.

This work confronts one of the central absurdities of the modern age. The evidence is overwhelming and unequivocal. The burning of fossil fuels is driving anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming, and that warming is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme heatwaves. Yet humanity continues to extract, burn, subsidize, and consume the very fuels accelerating the crisis with seeming indifference to the harm it is inflicting on the world and its ecosystems.

The contrast between beauty and terror is deliberate. The climate stripes are visually elegant, but they record a destabilizing planet. The glowing continents are dramatic, but they signify real risk. The sculptural body, drawn from an image of suffering, gives human form to what can otherwise seem abstract. The quote from a young French climate activist anchors the work in moral urgency, insisting that the crisis is not distant, theoretical, or merely environmental. It is already a question of life and death.

It’s A Crazy World is not simply about heat. It is about knowing and continuing destructive business as usual anyway. It asks viewers to consider the madness of a civilization capable of measuring its own danger with precision while still choosing to feed the fire.

A Note on the Image’s Creation:

The image was created using Ed Hawkins’ climate stripes and a detail from Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Ugolino and His Sons, photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on June 19, 2026. The globe, which is shown steaming, cracking, and opening pores in a failing effort to cool itself from withering heat, was generated using AI. Western Europe, where an extreme heatwave was occurring at the time the image was created, was colored red to mark the region’s exposure to dangerous heat. The thermometer and fossil fuel infrastructure were also created using AI.

Rose in Superposition

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Sutherland) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:01:29 +0000

Don Sutherland has posted:

Adapted using Artificial Intelligence from a Floribunda Rose 'Bolero 2004' photographed at the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, New York)—June 7, 2026.

In Rose in Superposition, the flower is reimagined through the language of quantum mechanics. The rose appears to rotate at extreme speed, its outer petals dissolving into luminous bands of color, while a tiny central core remains sharply resolved. This contrast between blur and clarity evokes the tension between motion and measurement.

Drawing on the idea of spin as an intrinsic property rather than ordinary rotation, the work transforms the rose into a poetic hybrid of botany and physics. The petals become orbit-like fields of color, suggesting superposition, energy states, and radiant probability. What emerges is not simply a flower in motion, but a meditation on identity itself. Even in turbulence, the heart of the bloom endures.

Smile

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Sutherland) — Sat, 30 May 2026 20:39:39 +0000

Don Sutherland has posted:

The poster was created as follows: “Smile” and the face were extracted from graffiti that was photographed in Patchogue, NY on June 23, 2024. The color was changed to better match the photos. The daffodils and red tulips were photographed at the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, NY) on April 12, 2026. The pink tulip was photographed at The Cloisters (New York, NY) on April 18, 2026. Auguste Rodin’s “Eternal Spring” was photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) on April 18, 2026. The poster, additional elements (including the heart above “Smile”) and additional text were generated using ChatGPT 5.5.

Smile is a celebration of tenderness, renewal, and everyday beauty. At the top of the composition, the hand-drawn word "Smile" becomes both title and gesture: spontaneous, playful, imperfect, and deeply human. The accompanying face, rendered with childlike boldness, transforms the poster from a decorative floral work into an invitation to joy, openness, and emotional release.

The classical sculpture introduces a note of intimacy and passion. The embracing figures in Eternal Spring are a symbol of care, vulnerability, and human connection. The sculpture’s stillness contrasts with the living energy of the flowers, creating a dialogue between permanence and fleeting beauty.

Together, these elements make Smile a visual meditation on simple joy, which can be found in flowers, kindness, love, and the decision to see beauty even in an imperfect and often troubled world.

Spring Tableaux

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Sutherland) — Sat, 23 May 2026 12:47:49 +0000

Don Sutherland has posted:

Spring Tableaux presents a lyrical encounter between photography, botanical memory, and the rapidly advancing language of artificial intelligence–assisted graphic art. The tulips were photographed at the Cloisters (except for the bottom left image which was taken at the New York Botanical Garden) and all the other flowers were photographed at the New York Botanical Garden during Spring 2026.

Those original spring photos were transformed by AI into a series of poster works. The resulting compositions blur the boundary between photograph, editorial design, botanical illustration, and museum object.

The works mark a significant moment in the evolution of AI as a graphic arts tool. Over the past year, AI’s capacity for visual composition, typographic sensitivity, image integration, and stylistic refinement has improved measurably. What once often appeared generic or technically uncertain can now achieve a level of polish, nuance, and conceptual cohesion approaching professional editorial and cultural design. Spring Tableaux uses that progress as a way of reimagining familiar natural beauty through the grammar of posters, print culture, and exhibition design.

Together, the three pieces form a seasonal triptych. They also offer an example of the expanding collaboration between human vision and AI.