:: Slow Down Time - Video Experiment #01 ::

A study in AI portraiture using the text-to-image service Midjourney in collaboration with Geert Lovink. The prompt was a simple provocation from Geert - "sad by design" from his book of the same name. No stylistic or technical parameters were used beyond specifying a 2:3 aspect ratio.

Procedural Notes

By blending the images into video (using RunwayML’s frame interpolation), we can see the algorithm iterate through layers of noisy abstraction as the composition evolves across a thread of thirty-two images.

By persisting with a simple unadorned prompt and iterating doggedly through many steps of variation and upscaling it is possible to achieve fleeting moments of coherence. At least four female portrait compositions are discernible amidst the more abstract mush of shapes and lines and shadow.

These patterns of emergence demonstrate how the algorithm seeks out formal references from the chaos and abstraction - the latent instinct of the diffusion model. In turn through our witnessing of the sequential playback, we are able to attribute meaning and mediated memories to the ghostly visage.

Through veils of abstraction, we can also see how this process reveals the biases and narrow bandwidth within the labeling method used to train the Midjourney algorithm as it seeks out visual stereotypes. The horror film poster featuring a blood red silhouette, the traumatized Asian/Middle Eastern figure in a scarf, the forlorn female model disappearing into the advertorial collateral and Picasso’s Weeping Woman perhaps?

The prompt mentioned neither gender or any form of embodiment. What is being designed here? Are women inherently sad - or just rendered that way by men and algorithms?

Furthermore, seeing the images assembled in this manner – containerized linearity - is a useful evolution, reminiscent as it is of the cascading reel of images delivered on the Discord server (albeit vertically) by the Midjourney Bot.

Referenced Links

Project Site :: Slow Down Time
Midjourney :: http://midjourney.com
RunwayML :: https://runwayml.com
Geert Lovink, Sad by Design series :: https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/sad-by-design-geert-lovink