Climate Disasters Inspired by Great Masters

Art exhibit by Mary Tiegreen with the help of AI. The 27 canvases will be on display in the Monell Building lobby space.

Each represents a current climate issue, including Extreme Weather by Vincent Van Gogh, Wildfires by James McNeill Whistler, and Sea Level Rise by Hokusai.

Mary Tiegreen: "Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to work as art director on ClimateChangeResources.org, an extensive not-for profit website dedicated to climate change issues. In early 2023, while working on ideas to illustrate sea level rise on the website, I began to wonder what New York City might look like under ten feet of water. I’d been dabbling with Bing’s AI text-to-image Creator (using the Dall-E 3 model from OpenAI) for a while and thought this could be a good test of the medium. Included in my prompt was a request for AI to paint this image of sea level rise in New York City in the style of James McNeill Whistler.

In less than 30 seconds, I was staring at an image that seemed to have been painted by an artist from a distant past, depicting an environmental crisis from the future. And that was how this project began.

The use of AI and its ability to create emotionally evocative and powerful images is an innovative approach. Art has a unique ability to move people, provoke thought, and open their eyes, making art an effective tool for environmental activism. These images can help to raise awareness about the important environmental issues. And through their beauty and emotional impact, they may draw people in to become involved in helping to ensure a better world and a sustainable future.

If we can suspend our disbelief just for a moment, we can almost imagine that these artists from long ago might have painted these images as early warning messages for us in hopes of slowing our march towards climate disasters."

Sea Level Rise Inspired by Hokusai. Image created by Mary Tiegreen with Bing AI