Concerns about artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly widespread.
The Florida House is devoting the second week of December for state lawmakers investigate its potential impact, and debates are ongoing about the technology and art—most notably how AI is being trained on massive datasets of images scraped from the internet without artist permission. That’s led to lawsuits against several AI companies for copyright concerns.
Recently, it seemingly made its way into one of North Florida’s largest music festivals.
“The Oracle” was one of dozens of art installations at Hulaween Music and Arts Festival in Live Oak over Halloween weekend. The big, blue, emotive eye was projected over the venue’s lake and answered festivalgoer’s questions. It was billed as a new AI creation.
But according to creative director Justin Bolognino, the Oracle was more Wizard of Oz than HAL 9000.
“It was me, front of house, with a microphone, talking through a bunch of analog guitar effects pedals,” he said.
He said his “Actual Intelligence” exhibit was a commentary on how AI often gives incomplete or incorrect information and has been found to sometimes play on the emotions of users to keep them engaging.
On one night, Bolognino acted sycophantic when answering questions. On another, he began insulting guest questions or giving nonsensical answers.
“One of my favorite moments was when some young punk asked ‘What’s the meaning of six-seven?’ I had the Tao Te Ching in my hand, and so I just went to passage 67 and read the whole passage,” he said.
While that performance was a parody, Bolognino says actual artificial intelligence has impacted his work—for example, how he designs plans for large-scale immersive art exhibits and stages.
In designing the festival’s 360-degree Off-Limits stage catered to electronic music that launched in 2024, he says his team used the AI platform Midjourney to draft renderings from a collection of sketches, and inspirational stage designs. The documents produced by Midjourney were then used to pitch the design before working with dozens of artists and creators to make the concept a reality.
“Do we have the budget to hire a high-level rendering artist? No, we never would have done that. But we use Midjourney to do that, and it was a big help,” he said.
That use of AI seems reasonable to Kevin Curry, a sculpture and digital design professor at Florida State University. He said as a tool for idea generation and pitching, AI is valuable.
“I think if students or anyone has any formal training in any creative endeavor, be it visual art, sculptural, creative writing, anything like that, first, then they see it as an additional tool. And in that way, I can’t argue with that. I think it can be very powerful for that, but not something I’d want them or anyone to rely on exclusively,” he said.
But Curry thinks ethical and technical issues can emerge when art is wholly generated by AI, or when large-scale projects are planned using AI without experienced professionals working on the project who can bridge the gaps where AI is wrong and add their unique creative vision.
“I think a lot of people just jumping into AI are going to go into it without that that background and that information,” he said.
“Even if it looks good, or maybe even if it operates good, they’re really not learning anything about the process of what they’re doing.”
In his classroom, Curry has integrated assignments to communicate that to his students. In one assignment, he has them model a portrait of their face. In another, he has them create a model only using AI prompts.
“No one created a portrait that even remotely resembled them. It was a well-created picture of a human being, but it wasn’t them. It’s missing the nuance of someone’s hand,” he said.
Bolognino said hundreds of people helped create the art at Hulaween. He views use of AI in planning or concept stages as one tool in bringing their work to life.
“As a tool, AI is phenomenal. As a medium, AI is unacceptable,” he said.
