ALICEDELIC BOSCH
Short Description
This image is a frame from Garden of Alicinations, the AI-assisted animated short film awarded Best Micro-Short Film at the Action/Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Prompt Logic
I began by digitally emptying Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, using Photoshop and AI tools to remove hundreds of figures and create an open stage. I then prompted ChatGPT to dress John Tenniel’s classic Alice with Bosch’s fantastical architecture, transforming the surrounding buildings into a wearable sculptural garment. In the animated film, fragments of these buildings detach from the landscape, fly through the air, and assemble themselves around Alice, becoming her dress in a continuous metamorphosis. IMAGES IN PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Process
Garden of Alicinations grew out of a long-standing artistic exploration of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the visionary imagination of Hieronymus Bosch. Rather than illustrating Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I imagined Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights as the landscape of Alice’s unconscious, where dreams, metamorphoses, and impossible architecture become part of her identity.
One of the greatest challenges was not generating images, but transforming an iconic painting into a space that could host a new story. I spent days digitally removing hundreds of figures from Bosch’s triptych, using Photoshop and AI-assisted tools to create an empty garden while preserving its visual integrity. Only then could Alice enter that world.
Another challenge was designing a garment that felt as though it had grown from Bosch’s architecture rather than simply borrowing decorative motifs. In the animation, fragments of the surrounding buildings break away, fly through the air, and assemble themselves around Alice, turning architecture into clothing through a continuous metamorphosis. This image captures one moment from that transformation.
The project combines historical collage, digital restoration, AI image generation, and animation to create a dialogue between Renaissance painting, Victorian illustration, and contemporary AI-assisted art. Rather than treating artificial intelligence as an autonomous creator, I used it as one tool within a carefully directed artistic process shaped by research, editing, and visual storytelling.
