Creative Convergence

From Leeroy's birthday dunk in Miller Fountain and a robot mimicking Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" to a delicious peanut butter and chocolate mashup and passionate jazz musician, the art of James Lee '26 fills the entire Spring 2024 Trinity magazine. A Trinity University student from San Antonio, Lee is majoring in computer science and communication and minoring in new media. This trifecta places him squarely in the center of the conversation around technology and humans' places in creative creation.

Lee believes generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a valuable new tool in an artist's supply kit, and his art reflects his belief. Throughout this issue, Lee's illustrations mash together AI-generated art with his own digital art, creating something completely new.

Learn more about the artist behind these creations.

First things first: Why did you choose to attend Trinity?

I was attracted to the blend of courses that Trinity offered. I am still unsure of what I want to do with my life, and as a liberal arts college, Trinity gives me the option of trying tons of new things.

Why are you drawn to the intersection of computer science, communication/media studies, and new media?

I've always been interested in computers from a young age, especially when it came to video games. Through SAY Sí, an afterschool arts program for underprivileged youth, I found that there is a lot more that you can do when it comes to creating art with computers other than video games. To tell a story through new media art, as the field encompasses so many different mediums, you can really do whatever you set your mind to. Now I especially love creating experiences and installations, transforming a space, and I've been doing a lot of work just improving my overall artistic skills while at Trinity. It is really satisfying to see your vision come to fruition whenever you finish a big project.

You attended SAY Sí and are now heavily involved in the program as a mentor and instructor for middle school and high school students. Why is it important to mentor young, creative students?

Middle schoolers are especially impressionable, so I think it is very important to be there to help guide them and help nurture their creativity. I think one thing a lot of schools lack, which SAY Sí does really well, is helping them to think creatively, push them to challenge themselves and the world around them, and understand a lot of really important life skills as well as artistic skills.

How do you perceive the role of AI in the future of art creation? Do you see it as a tool for enhancing human creativity?

AI is a great tool for assisting with the creation of illustrations in situations that demand quickness and for experimenting with ideas that I would not have imagined myself. There is currently a lot of debate on whether AI art is really art, and for my purposes, yes, it is. AI art is a type of assisted artwork. It's a cheat code similar to how all technology is a cheat code. Just like how filming on a digital camera rather than a film camera is a cheat code or editing footage on a computer versus splicing film by hand is a cheat code. Any time technology makes art easier to learn-more accessible, more efficient-we should applaud it. AI allows art to be in the hands of everyone, taking away a lot of stress that people might otherwise feel when creating art, because people should feel good when making their art.

Editor's Note: For this student profile, we wanted to mirror Lee's use of generative AI as a creative tool, so we used AI to help our creativity on the writing side. Some of the questions were generated by AI after we prompted ChatGPT with Lee's biography and the story direction. The title was also suggested by ChatGPT (and is far better than any alliterative title we could have conjured!).