yongwook seong’s AI graphic novel 'mask temple at seorak mountain'

an ai-generated thriller graphic novel by yongwook seong

Inspired by the demonic masked protagonist of the horror movie Friday the 13^th, Canada-based designer Yongwook Seong unveils his first AI-generated graphic novel titled ‘Mask Temple at Seorak Mountain’. The mysterious story recalls the journey of a traveler on his way from Seoul to Seoraksan Mountain in South Korea. Reaching a bizarre mountain temple filled with discarded masks and dedicated to a masked Buddha, he encounters mystical monks who accompany him on another journey of enlightenment.

The illustrations were created using the text-to-image AI program Midjourney, in an experimental collaboration between the designer and the technology. The iterative discovery process between the two eventually revealed evocative narratives out of incoherent self-generating images, which Seong further refined into meaningful sequences.

all images by Yongwook Seong

the evolving collaboration between designer + technology

Expanding the boundaries of design, and exploring the emerging influence of AI in the creative industry, Yongwook Seong utilized Midjourney for the conception of ‘Mask Temple at Seorak Mountain’. Feeding text-based prompts into the AI program, the designer engaged in an ongoing, iterative process to achieve the final result. Once a number of images had been generated, he noted that alone, these lacked meaning and coherence as a result of the aggregated outputs of relevant data collected by the algorithm. Despite this, they provoked thought and gradually revealed a narrative after they were intentionally sequenced together and defined with meaning through text. ‘Once multiple images were created from Midjourney, these played a neuronic stimulant role, which led the author to combine them as a role of synaptic connectors’, he notes.

a journey from Seoul to Seoraksan Mountain in South Korea

In the narrative creation process, Yongwook Seong also faced a dilemma about the communication and collaboration between the series’ two creators: the designer, and the artificial intelligence. He begins to question whether he distorts the interpretation of the AI-generated images by forcefully projecting an incorrect meaning onto them, or whether ‘is he genuinely entitled to be in a position to make gullible connections between these images?’ Nonetheless, at the end of the process, he concludes that: ‘Evolving from a simple input/output device, the infinite self-generating capability would further provoke creators and help them to expand their boundaries of creation.’

the traveller is inspired by demonic masked protagonist of the horror movie Friday the 13th