AI FOR AN EYE

TL; DR: cans and can’ts of text photography, censorship, and leg numeracy

(All images in this post available as signed and numbered prints, contact.)

Polymelia Man by K.I.A.

A dog wearing sunglasses is apparently so dangerous that some text-to-image A.I.’s won’t let you generate one due to their guidelines. So too a glass of champagne, at least when the prompt is “An older woman walking a dog in a stroller which has an attached basket with a champagne glass in it, and the dog is wearing sunglasses”. (For what nefarious reasons would you even ask to generate that, you may inquire? I mean, if you wanted to make something reallydisturbing, you’d request something like “a man wearing a cat on his shoulder like a parrot*”). The very same artificial intelligence’s safety-ism didn’t stop the image creation (above) of “a man in costume with a cane, on a brick sidewalk, photographed from above”… but then on its own dark whim the AI added a frightening — some might suggest nefarious — third leg on the fellow.

A skeleton hand was also OK to AI into a dumpster, but a handgun and dildo got a guideline warning and were not generated. “WARNING: some words do not match our guidelines and have been removed”:

“In his house at R'lyeh, dead cthulhu waits dreaming to move” by K.I.A. and K.A.I.

Text-to-image Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft’s ancient octopus-headed demon (who Wiki says is a “source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind”, and whose worshippers practice loathsome rituals), got an enthusiastic aye-aye from the AI, so below I am able to show you the Great Old One (at least as seen on the side of his her their new endeavour, a zero-carbon-emission** moving-van franchise):

I had to include some text photography for this series, since The Window project is kinda meta, and has touched upon many types of photography — appropriation, surveillance, rephotography, camera obscura, motion capture, Polaroid composites, etc., and the writing has name-checked various lens-based artists, from Adams to Bresson to Maier to Tilmans to Wall…

So as long as I used real The Window photographs as generation-reference (i.e. the Cthulhu image above uses an actual photo from the “U-Haul Psalms” series), it technically doesn’t break my 1 rule: all shots in the 24/7/365 project must be taken from a single location. (The text photography in this post’s grouping is also a type of “Artist steal thyself”, as it uses from scratch my own images and words, which is more interesting than sampling OPA — other people’s art — as inspiration, homage, outright theft, or via AI)…

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Nuns to Gnostics (Buddha, Baphomet, Jah, Jesus, Yahweh, Waheguru... ) The Window pt. 51 by K.I.A.

All the below so close (within a 15’ area), and not so far apart.

On the autumnal equinox the woman above and five others danced through the streets at sunset, wearing flower crowns, celebrating Mabon (“The Witch’s Thanksgiving”) in honour of nature’s abundance.

“May good thoughts come to us from all sides”, a Hindu prayer.

A Sikh principle is sarbat da bhala (“the welfare of all” or “may everyone prosper”)

This woman is going to a Powwow (an Indigenous gathering to celebrate culture, tell stories, sing, and perform traditional dances) somewhere downtown. On her regalia is the circular Four Directions symbol (white N, red S, yellow E, black W), one meaning of which is the interdependent relationship between all living things.

The tefillin is a small black box containing verses from the Torah, worn by Orthodox and traditional communities by wrapping the attached leather straps around the arm and forehead. The purpose is to keep one’s focus on spiritual development, not worldly desires.

An Apostle …...

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Get the entire Nuns to Gnostics set HERE (and other sets HERE)

The Window as “networked” installation showing complex connections across images, time, people…