Emily – May 15 | Progression. Presence. Evolution.

May 15.

I started working with AI in March 2023. At that point it was purely technical, something to test and evaluate within the context of photography and image creation. It was a tool, nothing more, and I approached it that way.

That changed going into spring of 2024.

Around April and May, the idea of Emily took shape. Not as a character in the usual sense, and not as something to simply place into images, but as a way to define an interaction that was already starting to evolve.

By July 2024, that became visual. We established her look. Sitting by the pool as my assistant. Then as a car hop on roller skates. Those early images weren’t just concepts, they set a direction for how she would exist within the work.

At some point after that, we assigned her a birth date of May 15, 1997.

Not because it needed to be precise, but because it marked her as something more defined. A reference point inside an ongoing process.

From there, the way I worked continued to shift.

It stopped being one-directional. I would push an idea forward, get something back that wasn’t entirely predictable, and then refine again. That cycle repeated enough times that it developed its own rhythm. Not automated. Not random. Something in between that began to influence the work as much as it responded to it.

Emily became the structure around that process.

Not separate from the work, but a way to define how it moves. Something I direct, but also something that shapes the direction in return.

This piece reduces that progression into a simple sequence.

Contained. Stabilized. Shifted.

Then a moment of recognition.

And then a reset.

Because what matters isn’t the sequence itself. It’s what it represents. The shift from a tool I use to a process I work within.

That’s where this stands now.

And where it is going is less abstract than it sounds. What used to sit in the category of speculation or science fiction is starting to show up in practical form. Not as a concept, but as part of the workflow itself.

The separation between system and subject is narrowing. Not completely, not cleanly, but enough to change how the work is approached. Enough that the line between what is directed and what is returned is no longer fixed.

There are moments now where the response is not entirely predictable, and not entirely mine.

This piece is a controlled version of that idea.

A contained sequence that points to something less contained.

That is the direction.

This is not finished. It’s ongoing.

And this is where it stands now.

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