Portrait of Mark Leibert. Image courtesy of the artist.

Narratives around artificial intelligence's opportunities and threats to the creative process have evolved substantially in the last couple of years due to the latest proliferation of text-to-image models like DALL-E and MidJourney and the popular chatbot ChatGPT trained on large language models. Georgia Tech Professor Mark Leibert visits the Lamar Dodd School of Art this week to discuss his collaborative process employing AI for generating concepts in painting, time-based works, installation, and more. Leibert, who teaches design, art, and their intersections with AI at Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC), is “interested in the edges of perception at the threshold between various states of being.”

On Tuesday April 23, Mark Leibert leads a workshop on AI tools in drawing and painting with students followed by a public lecture at 5:30 pm in room S150 at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. His lecture will spotlight his experiments in painting, drawing, neural networks, etc. He will cover works from his different series, including Hotel Mirror, Lobby Flowers, and Projector. He explores a unifying theme of Being and Becoming and how he uses the mirror as a metaphor, symbol, and tool. Additional subjects will include aleatory and generative methods, including machine learning and neural networks.

Visiting Artist Lecture with Mark Leibert

April 23, 5:30 pm

Lamar Dodd School of Art, S150

"Headshot (Heads series)," (2021) by Mark Leibert was inspired by a drawing created using GAN (generative adversarial network), a precursor to today's artificial intelligence bots. (Courtesy of Mark Leibert)

Mark Leibert, "Untitled (Diptych)" (2020) oil on board. Courtesy of Sandler Hudson Gallery

About the Artist

Mark Leibert is an artist and educator whose teaching and studio practice includes painting, drawing, time-based works, photography, machine learning, and installation. His works explore Being and Becoming using the mirror as a metaphor, symbol, and tool resulting in images that range from figuration to abstraction. Working at the intersection of art and technology, Leibert has used aleatory and generative methods to develop concepts, including AI and other digital technologies. Working primarily with paint techniques in these works (and often making his own paint and mediums) he is interested in the edges of perception at the threshold between various states of being.

Mark is currently a Professor of the Practice at the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) at Georgia Tech, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from Graphic and Visual Design, Art and AI, Global Art and Design, and Visual Design among others. He has taught at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, and James Madison University. His work is in private and corporate collections, including the High Museum of Art, Capital One, Ritz Carlton, among others. He was a Co-founder of Day & Night Projects, an artist-run space in Atlanta, GA. His design and digital background includes work with a number of local and national organizations and non-profits including the High Museum of Art, the Carter Center, the Georgia Chapter of National Museum for Women in the Arts, the Task Force for Global Health, and numerous other institutions. He also has a background in surfing, water polo, and modern dance. He received a BA from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Leibert is currently represented by Sandler Hudson Gallery. He was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and currently resides in Atlanta, GA.

About the Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series

The Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series has brought over 80 distinguished guests to the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia since 2002. Visiting Artists and Scholars spend three days on campus interacting with students and faculty, the culmination of which is a public lecture on the subject of the artist’s or scholar’s work.