Edition: 01-A1CB
The Net
Text prompt
The Internet does not exist
Source
angelicism01, The Internet Has Gone, Nobody Will Kiss You Baby: Clonal Axioms (3), May 24, 2022 on Substack.
Parameters
–no text, words
Midjourney Job ID #
1ea57c4a-9334-46c6-8edb-471c18b4b93c
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1074865528478384168
Date Commenced
23.11.22
Parent image
Geert Lovink – Author’s Response
Quick Scan of the Monstrous Image
In the early period of generative AI images, DALL·E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion were used to generate dark, creepy imagery. There was nothing wrong with their pixelation as all the required elements were present. The textures and colours of objects looked convincing. The human skins were puppet-like, but only upon closer inspection. The shock of the new was not in the gloom but in the text prompt: weirdness on demand. We already filtered our perfect selfies and ideal holiday snapshots up to the point of alienation.
We already filtered our perfect selfies and ideal holiday snapshots up to the point of alienation.
The monstrous images with the six fingers were fascinating because they were not competing with documentary photography — even though the gap was rapidly closing. The problem wasn’t that the images were ‘fake’ but that they were merely illustrations. Of what? These pure images generated for some unknown reason. No one had asked for them. Their aesthetics evoked the uncanny look and feel of science fiction films, computer games and VR environments. But what if we had not generated dystopian trash culture and instead cuteness, love and care? Why were the AI images so different from the new age psychedelic NFT wave, 18 months earlier?
But what if we had not generated dystopian trash culture and instead cuteness, love and care? Why were the AI images so different from the new age psychedelic NFT wave, 18 months earlier?
Early prompt usage looked for the raw edges of an unfinished technology. This is a McLuhan-style law of emergent media and is inevitable when a new medium opens up. There is dialectic materialist necessity here. Early adopters who took up the historical task were not interested in the digital mundane. Instead, they pushed boundaries to provoke the systems to show their true, ugly face. In the Covid aftermath period of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, defined by inflation, increased social inequality, mass migration and climate crisis, the AI imaginary appeared as a “shock of a violent crisis,” much like Walter Benjamin’s encounter with the Parisian Surrealists, back in 1926.
How do we assess the disorder of the senses today? Do we really dive into the techno-unconscious that is generated by black box software, unleashed into unknowable databases?
Probes were not done out of anxiety. Rather, they were driven by the all too obvious male adolescent curiosity to test boundaries. The will to crash should also be read as a death drive against a morally bankrupt capitalist system that refuses to die. The eerie is provoked to prove that the systems are not merely processual, lifelessly administrative, algorithm-meets-database tools but have an all too human element: the promise of an intelligent genius. It is evilness itself that proves that the machine is embodied by a spirit.
It is evilness itself that proves that the machine is embodied by a spirit.
Is today’s wave of techno-surrealism a red herring that obscures the ways AI will eventually be serving power? At this stage, we’ve moved from the shock tactics of the early prototypes to rapid implementation of AI in wildly different professional contexts, from film editing to law, accompanied by ethics and governance machines. There is a perverse pleasure to bring out the zombie in the machine in order to prove that AI is ‘capital’s willing executor’.
At some point the perverse curiosity fell flat. We returned to continental-European criticism to sharpen our minds. Silicon Valley servants frame critique as fear for the unknown but this rhetorical trick no long works. Take Francis Hunger’s call to ‘unhype’ and replace the words ‘intelligence’, ‘neuron’ and ‘learning’ with ‘statistics’, ‘weights’ and ‘conditioning’.
Is this the eye candy we deserve, in a desperate effort to manage our accelerated lives?
What condition am I lured into in this case? Is this dystopian wave serving a wider agenda to unleash an anti-capitalist ‘generative strike’? What restorative beauty do the platform billions need in order to maintain well-being inside their rabbit holes? Is this the eye candy we deserve, in a desperate effort to manage our accelerated lives? Is this the ‘copium’ meme culture speaks of? AI as an adaptive tool to restore sanity in an insane world? Here the macabre imagery falls silent and leaves it up to the viewer to decide what is being illustrated in the first place.
GL 15-05-2023
Edition: 09-A2BB
Sad by Design
Text prompt
Sad by design
Context parameters
NA
Parameters
–ar 2:3 –s 2500 –c 100 –no text –no words –v 3
Midjourney Job ID #
08cd7600-fa67-4626-844e-9dd3fbfdc0b8
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1074686000573448222
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent image
Edition: 11-A1
Dreams
Text prompt
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream
Source
Pink Floyd, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘ from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, EMI, UK
Context parameters
In the style of Wired Magazine, 1995
Parameters
NA
Midjourney Job ID #
be22062f-53ea-46d9-90b8-6998f62818d8
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077897088664338452
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid
Slideshow :: Editions 28-A3, 30-A3, 32-A2, 42-A3, 47-A1, 54-A4, 66-A3 & 70-A1 (8 sheets)
Dream (Emoji)
Text prompt
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream
Source
Pink Floyd, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘ from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, EMI, UK
Context parameters
Print ready contact sheet on a white background for a full suite of emojis depicting a Big Tech futurist hell scape. Must include icons for network viruses, software, computer peripherals, social media, gadgets, media files, error messages, mobile devices, microphones, cameras, tools, browsers, connections, storage and screens. Plastic, smooth texture, high contrast, realistic lighting. Gothic, surreal, scary, horror, cute.
Parameters
(Variously) in the style of Mark Ryden / Tim Burton / Jim Henson
Midjourney Job ID #
Image 01 :: 991b7671-0c27-4809-93a2-a16754123d33
Image 02 :: 57e7ae17-95eb-4690-b875-d157e7782813
Image 03 :: 770dafc6-a5d1-4fb4-8f7d-3355e7df649c
Image 04 :: e392b4de-607e-427c-be11-e2b5c70d4a74
Image 05– a3a06106-05af-4cc5-be27-651ac848e94e
Image 06 :: b59f93e0-51b7-4333-8f4e-f570d4fd80f4
Image 07 :: 7f99c142-cd8c-4361-b2df-aeee676e7cb7
Image 08:: e8e1f074-f3ee-45c7-a454-9487db6998b3
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
First sheet :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077877750091763732
Last sheet :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077883695060496444
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid (for first sheet, Edition 28-A3)
Parent grid (for last sheet, Edition 70-A1)
Edition: 18-A1HEC
Sad by Design
Text prompt
Sad by design
Context parameters
In the style of a mobile app interface
Parameters
–ar 2:3 –s 2500 –c 100 –no text –no words –v 3
Midjourney Job ID #
dfe63262-f692-4837-b833-ee56b7fa3f93
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077945102204403793
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid
Edition: 05-A1BC
Dreams
Text prompt
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream
Source
Pink Floyd, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘ from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, EMI, UK
Context parameters
In the style of Storm Thorgerson, 1975
Parameters
NA
Midjourney Job ID #
19_0242d1f9-4eeb-4a00-9f36-c044d3d1f363
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1066534860317016074
Date Commenced
22.01.23
Parent image
Edition: 07B-A2FB
Dreams
Text prompt
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream.
Source
Pink Floyd, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘ from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, EMI, UK
Context parameters
In the style of Omni Magazine, 1981
Parameters
–ar 3:2
Midjourney Job ID #
bfab3e6f-bbdd-4338-994f-0239c9f31590
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077076845746458705
Date Commenced
23.11.22
Parent image
Edition: 35C-A3
Sad by Design
Text prompt
Sad by design
Context parameters
NA
Parameters
–v 4
Midjourney Job ID #
7e78732e-4109-447b-8dcb-9d55298b734b
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1075425958032588920
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Image Prompt
Parent image
Edition: 58-A4F
Sad by Design
Text prompt
Sad by design
Parameters
–ar 2:3
Image blends
Midjourney Job ID #
7a1a5012-c204-4566-a913-ee4f7aea826b
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077072305420767262
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid
Detail Samples: 28-A3 – 73-A3 (from 15 sheets)
Dream (Emoji)
Text prompt
What did you dream?
It’s alright, we told you what to dream.
Source
Pink Floyd, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘ from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, EMI, UK
Context parameters
Print ready contact sheet on a white background for a full suite of emojis depicting a Big Tech futurist hellscape. Must include icons for network viruses, software, computer peripherals, social media, gadgets, media files, error messages, mobile devices, microphones, cameras, tools, browsers, connections, storage and screens. Plastic, smooth texture, high contrast, realistic lighting. Gothic, surreal, scary, horror, cute.
Parameters
In the style of Mark Ryden / Tim Burton / Jim Henson
Midjourney Job ID #
First sheet :: 991b7671-0c27-4809-93a2-a16754123d33
Last sheet :: 70e4f797-57e1-4639-b324-a2e31f42e805
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
First sheet :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077877750091763732
Last sheet :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077877638967869520
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid (First sheet – 28-A3)
Edition: 08-A2D
The Net
Text prompt
The Internet does not exist
Source
angelicism01, The Internet Has Gone, Nobody Will Kiss You Baby: Clonal Axioms (3), May 24, 2022 on Substack.
Parameters
–ar 16:9 –no text, words
Midjourney Job ID #
49711943-c723-4f50-b53f-99863e87be0b
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077895258458828820
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid
Video Experiment #01
Editions: 09-A4 – 09A4ID (32 images)
Sad by Design
Text prompt
Sad by design
Context parameters
NA
Parameters
–ar 2:3 –c 100 –no text –no words
Midjourney Job ID #
Start :: e5f324d4-c4a7-46c8-84fb-cb1c0956021d
End :: 2e3ca963-066b-4b21-8a39-efcb8297121a
Prompt Author
Geert Lovink
Discord Message Link
Start :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077436548393476269
End :: https://discord.com/channels/1044910691729023096/1044910692202971190/1077435783411159070
Date Commenced
23.01.23
Parent grid
Production Contact Sheet
The The Net series
Production Details
Image production dates: 23-01-2023 to 22-02-2023
Editions :: 50
Parent Grids :: 10
First Discord instance:
Image series citation:
Lovink, G., Goodwin, M. & Midjourney, “Geert Lovink – The Net,” in Slow Down Time, Goodwin, M. Ed. Melbourne: Word Press, April 17, 2023, http://slowdowntime.com/geert-lovink/
Production Contact Sheet
The Dreams series
Production Details
Image production dates: 23-11-2023 to 16-02-2023
Editions :: 104
Parent Grids :: 51
First Discord instance:
Image series citation:
Lovink, G., Goodwin, M. & Midjourney, “Geert Lovink – Dreams,” in Slow Down Time, Goodwin, M. Ed. Melbourne: Word Press, April 17, 2023, http://slowdowntime.com/geert-lovink/
Production Contact Sheet
The Sad by Design series
Production Details
Image production dates: 23-01-2023 to 23-02-2023
Editions :: 311
Parent Grids :: 62
First Discord instance:
Image series citation:
Lovink, G., Goodwin, M. & Midjourney, “Geert Lovink – Sad by Design,” in Slow Down Time, Goodwin, M. Ed. Melbourne: Word Press, April 17, 2023, http://slowdowntime.com/geert-lovink/
Production Contact Sheet
The Dream (Emoji) series
Production Details
Image production dates: 13-01-2023 to 15-02-2023
Editions :: 60
Parent Grids :: 51
First Discord instance:
Image series citation:
Lovink, G., Goodwin, M. & Midjourney, “Geert Lovink – Dream (Emoji),” in Slow Down Time, Goodwin, M. Ed. Melbourne: Word Press, April 17, 2023, http://slowdowntime.com/geert-lovink/
Slow Down Time 