NgocHan-Chau
INSECTA OBSCURA Parasites of the Imagination & A Warning from the Post-Human
Exhibited at: AI Art Gallery – CVPR 2025
AI Art Creator: Ngoc-Han Chau
Country: Vietnam
Check more images: FULL SET
My virtual exhibition (input the code for free-access: 131013) HERE
Story telling
As we glance around the world, we like to find tidily drawn lines — lines of distinction between species, between life and matter, between small insects and complicated humans. But imagine if AI enabled us to remake life itself? Imagine if the human body were not fixed, but a canvas upon which insect urge, plantlike sensibility, and machine brain were transplanted? This is a dreamworld of images from a posthuman era — where the human form is no longer central but as a means of transporting hybrid beings across nature, technology, and feeling.About the work
INSECTA OBSCURA: is a blend of AI artwork series, fusing speculative biology, horror surrealism, and emotional cost of automation. Insect, plant, and human hybridization is a figure for transspecies evolution. With the biological boundaries dissolving, the human is no longer central but is part of a new symbiotic world. The work asks: "If life were redesigned from scratch, what form would it take?" It is a visual posthuman manifesto, where AI enables us to reconceive body beyond the limitations of conventional biological thinking.Workflow
The artwork was created using Midjourney, not as a dormant image generator but as an interactive visual AI system. Through repeated prompt engineering, I guided the generation of structure, texture, lighting, and biomorphic detail – creating each beast through human intention and machine inference. The method adheres to the paradigm of artist–AI collaboration: wherein the human provides conceptual guidance and reimagining in the pattern form is reciprocated by the machine. Such a blended methodology is indicative of critical collaboration with computer vision systems as co-creators, rather than tools. Unlike diffusion models and NeRF, Midjourney offers a distinctly different visual process — one built not from low-level control or spatial reconstruction, but from high-level aesthetic direction through language. Midjourney is about immediacy, symbolism, and emotional connection in 2D image-making. The workflow is intuitive: each prompt is a formative movement, each shifting texture, light, and shape to the next. It is an instrument of psychological painting.Creative Concept
In "INSECTA OBSCURA", I ask the question:
What if insects were not just peripheral creatures, but parasites of our own minds?
The piece was created with MidJourney, drawing upon the power of:
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Exaggerated insect anatomy: bulging compound eyes, iridescent exoskeletons, articulated limbs and antennae – all twisted into contemplative poses with expressive body language.
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Uncanny humanization: every creature appears as if it’s a character in an abstract tragedy – furious, anxious, hesitant, or utterly lost.
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Material simulation techniques: shells that resemble gemstones, skin textures that evoke the fragile translucency of plant tissue – creating an evocative yet unsettling visual contrast
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Influence from sci-fi and bio-art: part Giger’s machine-flesh fusion, part anatomical poetry, softened by fluid elegance, and touched by the grotesque imagination of 1980s body-horror cinema.
