14 Dec 2023/17 min/BLAC
MLow X BLAC Interview
AI artist BLAC lays out a complete philosophy of prompting as language calibration, breaking tools on purpose, and knowing why you create, not just how.
Recorded as a full Google Meet on November 15, 2023 and published that December, this is the show's deepest dive into AI art method. BLAC arrives with a traditional grounding, abstract expressionism, oil painting and photography, and a practice built on dark and light, transcendentalism and a sprinkle of the occult. He explains the Black Label Art Cult, the artist incubator with Friday critique sessions that MLow himself has just joined, named as the extreme antithesis of Bored Ape Yacht Club: not a club, a cult.
The middle of the conversation is a masterclass in method. BLAC started with AI in late 2021, building a custom model on VQGAN with a developer and working in a silo for months before discovering the web3 AI art scene. He treats prompting as a conversation with someone who does not speak his language, calibrating terms like red cup against red glass; he prompts photorealistic work as if directing a photo shoot; and every time a new feature ships, like Midjourney's style tuner, he immediately tries to destroy it to find the edge. His core claim, which he calls the new meta: with the ability to create anything, why you create matters more than how.
The last stretch reveals the scale of his ambition. His Syncretica project is an invented belief system feeding series like Penumbra and The Ages of Syncretica on SuperRare, backed by a religious text he is writing with ChatGPT, Claude and Sudowrite: 50,000 words done, roughly 880,000 planned, which would make it the largest religious text in the world. He also won Claire Silver's contest with a Claude built muse chatbot, and closes with predictions: creator driven film studios, Netflix going the way of Blockbuster if it does not adapt, and real time self generated content.
What this episode teaches
- Low effort people make low effort work
BLAC rejects the low effort critique of AI: the tool does not determine the effort, the person does. AI suits the space's high volume cadence, but volume without intent is on the artist, not the medium.
- Prompting is language calibration
He treats the model as someone who speaks back in images: test red cup against red glass, learn what each word pulls, and build a shared vocabulary the way you learn phrases in a foreign country.
- Prompt like a photo director
For photorealistic work he writes prompts as direction for a photo shoot: ultra low angle, wide angle lens, f stop, exposure, wardrobe, scene. Concrete photographic language gives control that adjectives never will.
- Break the tool on release
When Midjourney shipped the style tuner he immediately tried to make it fail, deconstructing the model of perfection to see what came out the other side. Everyone else uses a feature as intended, so its broken edge is unoccupied territory.
- Why, not how, is the new meta
Once anyone can render anything, intent becomes the scarce input. Defining your purpose and what you are trying to express is, in his words, when you start to see yourself come out into the work.
- Early model outputs are structurally rare
He estimates the ratio of VQGAN era images to post Midjourney volume at maybe 200,000 to a million, and predicts early model work, including early Stable Diffusion, will resurface as rare and valuable because it cannot be recreated at scale.
- Make philosophy the constant, style the variable
Most artists hold style constant and vary the subject. BLAC inverts it: a core belief system runs through completely different visual identities, so people recognize the idea rather than the look. He concedes it is the harder path.
- You are the chef
On imitators: someone can copy the dish but not the ingredients. Because he blends his own oil painting textures and photography into his prompts, a recreation is box pasta next to fresh, close in appearance and different in substance.
- Build for where the technology will be
He calls it predictive process: he cannot edit a million word document or make a full AI film today, but he structures projects now so the technology meets him down the path. If you wait until it is possible, you are already behind.
- Sharing creates abundance
From the incubator to his released muse chatbot, his equation is that creating a space for other people to create equals abundance. Sharing process is generative; copy pasting prompts is not.
The conversation, topic by topic
Who BLAC is
A traditionally trained expressionist and photographer who spent his career in and out of creative teams, now working heavily with AI. His work runs dark and light with transcendentalist themes and a little occult, expressing, in his phrase, all is dark, all is light, we are everything in one.
The Black Label Art Cult
He liked the cadence of Bored Ape Yacht Club and built its extreme antithesis: a cult, an art cult. Black Label came from a consulting agency he ran for startups; he shortened his handle to BLAC in January, though many of his smart contracts still read Black Label Art Cult. The incubator runs Friday critique sessions, a slow, organic, trusting space MLow has just been inducted into.
Into AI before the scene existed
He worked with a developer in late 2021 to build a custom model on VQGAN and a diffusion variant, creating art in a silo for four to six months before realizing others were using these tools for fine art. A day trading and Forex background had already brought him to crypto; he joined Twitter in May 2022 and calls AI plus web3 the forefront of a new Renaissance, arriving together for a reason.
Stewardship of an infant technology
His frame for the AI and web3 relationship: nobody knows how symbiotic it becomes, the inflection points will only be visible in retrospect, and the community should act as stewards. The spark has happened, but the fire has not even started yet.
The rarity of old models
BLAC argues web3 acts as a timestamp on each technical era. His unreleased thousands of VQGAN era pieces, and early Stable Diffusion work with its high barrier to entry, will read as rare against the flood of images from newer tools. He is now circling back to those early aesthetics with the style tuner, full circle two years later.
Method: translation, direction, blending
Prompting as conversation across a language barrier; photorealism prompted like a photo shoot; dark surrealism built by blending his own oil painting textures, old photography and deliberately broken Midjourney prompts, a process he describes as painting with images. For psychedelic work he free writes middle sections like automatic writing.
Image to image, copying and copyright
He has seen direct blends of his own released work and takes it as flattery with an edge of vulnerability. Technically a diffusion output starts from a zero point rather than tracing, but he stresses that does not settle copyright. MLow's practice: always ask permission and credit in the description, informed by having had academic research taken by companies.
Differentiation: idea over style
The two discuss identifying markers: MLow cites Bryan Brinkman's constant color palette, Rocket Girl painting over her AI output, and Patrick Amadon owning digital disobedience from Hong Kong to Sotheby's. BLAC wants to be known for an idea rather than a look, funneling one core philosophy through many visual identities.
When to mint
Prompted by Pindar Van Arman holding his 2018 AI portraits five years until the community was ready, and MLow's own 2016 photography minted only now, BLAC dismisses the rules: mint now or mint later is the artist's call alone, as long as the work adds value and is not toxic.
Learning without copying
On Lexica and Midjourney's explore page: useful for learning how prompts are structured, first word to last, not for copy pasting. He distinguishes sharing process, which Claire Silver does constantly, from sharing prompts. In the incubator he ran an impromptu start to finish style tuner walkthrough after figuring it out with Delta Sauce.
Muse AI and Claude
BLAC won one of Claire Silver's contests with Muse AI, a chatbot built on Claude that helps artists invoke concepts and layouts. Users messaged him about entire emotional experiences talking to it. He is rebuilding it with the 100K context model, and notes Claude's tone stays more sensational than ChatGPT's GPTs.
Syncretica and the 880,000 word text
His framework belief system, Syncretica, has eleven levels drawing on Transcendental Meditation, Vedic texts, astral projection, alchemy, occultism, Christianity, Hebrew and Sumerian sources. Penumbra will be eleven works, five minted. The accompanying religious text stands at over 50,000 words, written in prose with ChatGPT for framework, Claude for narrative and character, and Sudowrite for mass text, aiming at roughly 880,000 words: the largest religious text in the world.
The Ages of Syncretica
A member of Strange History, he built an alternate history where Syncretica was real, running on SuperRare across three books: Camelot from JFK in the 1960s to 2033, Ruination folding in his earlier False Idols series about a global elite cult, and Exodus, humanity leaving the planet. Each release adds one piece per book, with cheaper scroll edition mints beside 1/1 milestones, and a full showcase holding the living narrative. One collector relisted a piece at 60. He calls it building an HBO series worth of IP.
Where it all goes
Runway's new masking tool convinces him film grade AI content lands by spring. Hollywood does not die; creators get empowered, small production houses crank out films in six weeks, and Netflix adapts or goes the way of Blockbuster, with self generated real time content as the endgame. His own setup is modest: a 2017 era iMac, Midjourney, and a history of running Stable Diffusion through Google Colab. He points to Underworld, who inpaints grid by grid into 20,000 megapixel pieces and ran Peter Gabriel's concert visuals, as proof of what custom pipelines already do.
In their words
“Low effort people make low effort stuff. If you're not low effort, you're not putting out a bunch of low effort stuff regardless of what you're using.”
BLAC“The spark has happened, but the fire has not even started yet.”
BLAC“It's almost like a conversation with someone that doesn't speak my language, where I speak in English words and they speak back in images.”
BLAC“I feel like I'm the chef. I know all the ingredients that are in my dish. It's like box pasta versus making your own.”
BLAC“Creating a space for other people to create equals abundance.”
BLAC“The why will become the most important question to answer, rather than how.”
BLACCite this conversation
BLAC in conversation with MLow, "MLow X BLAC Interview," The MLow Show, 14 Dec 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-12-14-mlow-x-blac-interview.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.