Understanding the ngram

 Ngrams are complicated, especially for those without a formal understanding of computer data objects. I wanted to post about ngrams and why they're special, interesting, and for as simple as they are, so powerful.

How do we store data in a computer? We have variables for that. However, assigning one name to every variable makes it clunky to recall. For that reason, we want to organize the data into chunks. One of the very earliest and simplest data types is the linked list.

The linked list is a 1-dimensional line of variables connected to each other. The list doesn't actually have to "exist" as its own separate object. Each of the elements of the list point to other elements in the list. So, the first object points to the second object and the second object points to the third and back to the first object. So, all you need to start a list is a first object. 

I have a list:

1. Hieronymus 
2. Sofonisba
3. Grant 
4. Blastonymus

Instead of numbers, which you don't have, you have something like this:

Hieronymus-Sofonisba-Grant-Blastonymus

So, if we want to get to Blastonymus, we must first pass Hieronymus, Sofonisba, and Grant, taking three steps. We can also move back on the list by calling the pointers that link the objects to one another. The most important thing to understand here is that you can only move back or forth. That means that you're in a one-dimensional space or on a line. That's the most important thing. Imagine yourself as a little car driving down the street trying to get to your friend Blastonymus's house but you're currently hanging out with Hieronymus. You must now drive three houses down. Your entire universe is those four houses.

Binary trees

The garden of forking paths is your binary tree. Every time you make a choice, you're presented with another one until the space ends. The sense of organizing information like this is that it allows you to issue directions in either left- or right-hand turns. This space still makes sense to us. Even when we're presented with three or four choices. We can still move back and forth in a way that doesn't entirely mess with our sense of direction. Once we get to ngrams that will stop.

Ngrams

Linked lists are one-dimensional data objects. You can only go back and forth. Binary trees are two-dimensional data objects because they bifurcate and offer more paths. Ngrams are n-dimensional data objects and they cause problems.

Imagine that you're at Hieronymus's house and you go to Blastonymus's house. So, now you're there, but gosh, you forgot your important object. So, now you must go back. The road you took is not the same road you need to take back. In fact, that road is gone. Worse, there may be no way to get from Blastonymus' house to Hieronymus's house. 

Further, instead of one direction, you have an indefinite number of dimensions that are continually added as we accrue ngrams. While it's certainly possible you could find your way back, it's also possible that way does not exist. 

With a linked list or a binary tree, you can always work your way back. With ngrams, you can end up on an island in a universe with no exits. 

Demonstration

"The first dog demanded that the second dog be more of a dog."

This is our sentence. An ngram algorithm will take this sentence and return the following data:

• The->first(1), second(1)
• Dog->demanded(1), be(1), .(1)
• First->dog(1)
• Demanded->that(1)
• ...

In this case, the data for the ngram "The" will produce the links "first" and "second". The numbers represent the weight, or how many times the two terms come in sequence. Once you go from "The" to "first", there's no way back to "The". The ground collapses behind you. But that's not the problem spatially.

Even if you could get back from "first" to "The" the same roads won't be awaiting you.

So, let's say we drive from Hieronymus' house to Sofonisba's house. Sofonisba's house could be connected to Hieronymus's house or hundreds even thousands of other houses that suddenly appear once we're at Sofonisba's. So, even if there's a link back to our house, it's one of the thousands of others that lead elsewhere.

The ngram behaves like a multi-dimensional spatial object akin to the Hypercube.

Code of Ur-Nammu, is the (state, law, government) an AI-machine god?

 The earliest known legal text is not the Code of Hammurabi but a lesser-known text, the Code of Ur-Nammu. Linguistically, the text is composed of If - then statements. It is essentially a script. And the earliest known written example of codified law at over 4,000 years old. 

So, as the earliest example of the mechanical adjudication of justice, we have statements like: If a man murders, that man will be executed. If a man commits a robbery, he will be executed. If a slave marries a free man, that slave must turn over their firstborn son to their owner. 

And so on. So, it's a mechanical process for resolving disputes such as when your slave fails to turn over their firstborn. The surviving laws become increasingly more disturbing as they go on. 

However, there is also a system of torts. If a man severs another man's nose with a knife, he must pay him two-thirds of a mina of silver. 

So, it's a process, a script, a spectral machine. If this happens, then that must happen. It works the same way each time. Now, we don't know about matters of procedure or how the truth was determined. In some cases, flinging an individual into the water sufficed to prove what needed to be proved. 

The law is a kind of artificial intelligence that takes the decision-making power out of the individual's hands. In this case, judges would not be free to determine a sentence (as they are under U.S. law to some extent). The outcome is mechanized, and thus predictable, and hence it reinforces the order of moral good, and the order of moral gods. 

Interestingly enough, Job was based on a Sumerian and Babylonian myth that tackled many of the same issues as the biblical version, and this is also the cradle of Western Civilization, so there's a lot we can understand by going back and looking at the earliest stuff we can find. 

So, this is going to be a recurring conceptual motif I'd like to draw out in this blog. The state/government/law as a kind of artificial machine god. 

The machines took over a long time ago

A brief history of God + An introduction on spectral machines 

You didn't notice because real machines hadn't been invented yet. But spectral machines have always existed. We call these spectral machines "the law" and it governs everything you do and it's processes are automatic. It serves the same function as a machine, albeit, a much grander one. 

The government, law, and the state is the machine we invented to replace "God". Now, a conservative might hear this and think I'm against the state and for God. I might be, had I any notion of what God was. Instead, I have the state, the law, and the government. And I know precisely what those are. 

In the beginning, was the law, and the law was the instantiation of God, and God looked after all of us. You see, it wasn't apparent to early humans that moral goodness would be reinforced by indifferent nature. Nature is intrinsically amoral. If one man can enrich himself via the murder of another, then murder is reinforced. But its impact, on the whole, creates a problem for everyone, even the murderer. A murderer can murder an entire city to enrich himself. But if he left no one behind to envy him, what would be the point?

In order to discourage the murderer, you need a different sense of the universe than the one nature has provided. You need: The Moral Universe.

Fast forward to Job. The devil and God get into an argument. God says, "look here at Job, he is pious and good."

The devil replies, "Of course he is good. He can afford to be good. The poor man is only as good as he can afford to be."

God considers this, then proceeds to strip Job of his wealth, health, and family. The townsfolk assume that Job is a bad man since God has punished him. Yet Job insists he deserved none of this. The story makes it clear that it's still going to happen. Ultimately, Job is restored in heaven, even after breaking. The point is: There is a moral grammar to the universe, but you have to wait a lifetime to get there. So, if we're religious, we buy that argument, lead good lives, and go to heaven. 

But unfortunately, that's not enough. We need to do some of the punishing ourselves, play God, and do his job for him, since he won't. In other words, we need to create a system to enforce the moral grammar that nature will not enforce. Hence, the law, the state, and the government.

The law as a machine

What is a machine? It operates on its own, more or less, or automates some of the labor. A plow automates the process of plowing making the task easier. The computer automates serial processing, something humans are not particularly good at. We're much better at automating processes for serial processing. Arithmetic is one serial process that computers can perform much better than humans. Much faster. 

The law operates as a machine of procedure and process in which humans only perform as functionaries. The law operates, ostensibly, above the humans that perform individual functions. It restricts us, assigns penalties for violating restrictions, it makes demands of us, and assigns penalties for violating those demands. It is, for all intents and purposes, the technology of God. 

So, the next time you're worried about AI taking over, remember, that there is at least one machine that's been running your life this entire time.

Risperdal: An American Prophecy (poem + response)

I am godlike, void of scruples. i am children's guns in school. whoever is not with me is against me. whosoever does not gather with me scatters. with a passion for apathy my army of innocence advances along the machinelike landscape both toward and away from you are made to be broken (orders). facts become fictions satisfied by Faith my true field. my experience of you is invisible to you. i'm compelled to explain the relation copula of our science (process by proxy) dredged out of this transaction. this unlikely crucifixion is the prescription for alienation. i sacrifice and thus am normal, subject to the stars your brain creates that i imagine. flushed down by fate, the intimacy of outcome, process by proxy, i am hollowing to a mask. an object of my successes, america, a malcontent, stagnating insofar as i am satisfied, infected insofar as your reflection. this miracle bubbled out of a box. there's nothing between us but each other. midgets choose midgets. america, its reflection at a distance. you relax while i contract. the path of least resistance requires a mastery of restraint. faith is [Will] visions and voices this insubstantial pageant is peopled by competitive presences. my disease will forgive your cure. zapruder will rewind kennedy's brain back into his skull. brady's bill will be shot like columbine into the hands of a child covering her face. i can't remember the question, america, but she said yes. pills get rid of all of us, oversleeping dreamers, spindle stacked through a hole in the middle of my rewritable media. tangled in confusion, constructed moonlike out of emotion. we fall ultimately into simplicity from a past we used by habit. cut to conceive, misleading sharply into the mainline. such a shield is now necessary. the price paid same parts of the system sorted psychic stuff personas fashion out of people. It's nesting (hunting) nesting season, and the beasts carry diseases, wearing kevlar condoms for security reasons. god bless you america, and save your receipt. your credit isn't good here (i don't trust you trust me). you only preach to sheep. kill yourself and nothing else, america, suicide attempts are inherent in depressive illness may persist until remission occurs we will die like lambs together in order to minimize the risk of overdosage risperdal prescriptions should be written for the smallest quantity consistent with patient managemenT.

***

Author's notes.

The sensibility of this poem is almost entirely Taoist. It's a this-affects-that argument that holds that "when this becomes good, that becomes bad." So, "you relax while I contract" is much like the inverse relationship to standards of excellence as opposed to failure, beauty to ugliness, and everything that is exalted on the one half, diminishing the other. This is a Derridean sensibility as well, but I didn't have Derrida when I wrote this poem. I had Taoism. 

Two. The poem is a "confusion" of voices all of which have their own agendas popping out of a unified whole. The image I had in my mind when I wrote the poem: Possessed Linda Blair in the exorcist. There is no unified purpose, no single sentiment, no logic in the interpretation that one agency could produce all of these sentiments. They run over each other, interrupt each other, cancel each other out, and come to nothing. The tones of individual sentences are at points sentimental and clinical. The voice comes closer to its subject matter, and moves away. Who or what is the voice discussing? Children. What they must feel growing up in an environment where school shootings happen. And again, my feelings on how this happens and why it will continue to happen.

If you're going to write a prophecy, you can't write about yourself. Those are generally the rules of a prophecy. Self-mythology is an aspect of Blake, Hunter S. Thompson, and other notable writers who inspired my work, but it isn't an aspect of prophecies that are written by me. 

I wrote about myself when I was young and interesting, but nowadays, I'm quite comfortable with my dogs, my partner, and our house. I'm currently watching Black Sails while I'm writing this blog post. Do you want me to write a poem about that? No? Okay. So, I focus on things that are more interesting, disturbing, and above all, important. 

Ultimately, prophecies are recurring patterns that have been generalized to make a more profound point. They're not about me or you or them. They're always about us. If you know your bible, then you know that they ultimately aren't about hope. They explain why a society is being punished. They offer hope if they are so inclined, but they don't have to. I hoped that simply being aware of the pattern would be enough to stop it, but awareness is only the first step. And now I know what I didn't then, that it's almost like breaking an addiction. And it's hard work.

***

This poem is problematic in a good way. It doesn't present you with a side. It presents you with voices. Some of the lines are taken off the warning labels of popular medications. To this day, I read this poem and am kind of shocked that I'm the one who wrote it. It's just a really good poem that I'm insanely proud to put my name on. So, if you ask me about this poem. I'll tell you that it is the best poem I ever wrote and explain how it was constructed. 

As far as the meaning goes, breaking it apart and sorting through it is the meaning. That act is what makes it meaningful. If it's rejected, it's meaningful. If it's analyzed it's meaningful. If it's considered, it's meaningful. Hopefully, it will be ignored because it's not important. And thus it will, like Tennyson's Kraken, die on the surface.

Print Media Satire

 One of the best things that the AI can do is present natural things unnaturally. This makes it ideal for certain forms of representation. It makes it especially fun for satire. It manages to produce an interesting uncanny feel to these print media replicas. 

The Cursed Jester

This is an image that I think is important from a cultural perspective. It was Heath Ledger's portrayal in the Christopher Nolan trilogy that really solidified our image of the Joker as a sociopath who "just wanted to watch the world burn." Suddenly, he was gritty and real. He wasn't remote. He wasn't a mastermind of chemistry or other cartoonish supervillian abilities. He was just a dude who commanded attention, was fearless, and enjoyed fucking with people. He seemed insane, but he was consistent. Ultimately, he wanted Batman to see just how self-motivated and unethical the human race was, to demoralize him, to convert him to Jokerism. He wanted to win an argument. Maybe even someone to form a connection with, misguided as he was.

Then you have the image of the Joker rebranded with Joaquin Phoenix and I found that very boring. But the Joker as a mentally ill unemployed clown suits a deeper psychological narrative about how bad clowns are made. This is a difficult problem for a lot of reasons, caught up in nature versus nurture and every hybrid in between. Suffice it say, we analyze the things we fear. "Coming to terms" is a very real thing. 

Ultimately, we're genetically coded to tell stories. So, let's tell a story, a blunt one. No frills. You have a kid, an outcast, who finally finds a tribe. His tribe encourages certain behaviors, discourages others. He does what's encouraged, avoids was discouraged. All the while reinforced by social conditioning. Operant conditioning explains all of it. Even how a kid can think a lone act of apparent balls is worth throwing away his life. And that boring Joker movie is its modern myth.

What is an archetype?

An archetype is not itself a pattern, but rather the image of a pattern, frozen. It can stand in for the pattern, represent the pattern, but itself is a signifier in the truest sense of the word. We won't be confusing archetypes with patterns ever. 

Images of the Cursed Jester

This image was generated via a prompt. In this case, we wanted a court jester who was standing on skulls. Instead, we got a skull man delivering an uppercut. No artists were specified in the creation of this image. Three more were also created with the same prompt:

These images were generated with the following tags:

"Artemisia Gentileschi, Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya" + clown entropy + pain magic

These are the same tags with Odilon Redon added:

"Norman Rockwell, Grant Wood, Theodore Gericault, Sofonisba Anguissola, Hieronymus Bosch" + "clown entropy, pain magic"

 

 

Fun with AI Art: Battle of the Styles

"A dreadful remedy" (cubism X hyperrealism)

Cubism times hyperrealism = bas-relief effect. 

 

KJV generates pictures

 Today's venture into collective memory will involve two generation techniques. The first will use words, the second will use images. The image generator does best with nouns and adjectives. Verbs are harder. I'm using my own ngram algorithm which you can play with here. The algorithm is wired to be as random as possible, but can only reproduce phrases it has already "eaten." 

At some point, I enhanced the algorithm to include punctuation, which made it significantly cleaner. This text was generated off of a bias that was "eaten" with a previous version of the algorithm. So, it's not nearly as clean. It produces output like this:

amain, one manner with truth, that rotteth and is, mine eyes: the minister by year king Hezekiah and walls, O Joshua, who fleeth away. Then brought gold at noonday as yet hope for? I stood forth. and reader of Gabael, of Boaz of Rechab.

 doctors of creeping things, he lose it: she deliver unto myself. I come. So Ahab at once; that Sisinnes the Tishbite, Arise, lift itself into desolation: the angels; and Tahath his bishoprick let Daniel purposed to beg in Dan. And joy no master: let tears of Joab did, believed also: and staves? And Obed- edom with anger. he of? for skin, yea, to Rages,

 lamp, and lost the treader of Jeshua begat sons come, whereof cometh and pipe, and delight himself entered by parents, or all valiant acts our mother, And Kish begat David say so evil. And ten bases: all mine increase.

 fame hereof went one log of Gera, and scarlet robe, and shaken leaf driven stubble fully persuaded that, such speeches proceeded, as Esaias said Thomas, and begat Judas was strong city: one language, and Pontius Pilate, and safe in judgment far as Obadiah the thirty men by God after it reigned, in travail.

 false prophets from her father put away mine adversary?

 Master, the laughter the lord was bitter.

 Choba, and Ismachiah, and viewed the garden in fetters; and Mattithiah, and read many desired I looked, they tread down out thine army. And Hiram out wisdom: but destroyed my house: for breach, with fruit. For all godliness of Michael:

 disquietness of Hashub, the months. And thirty elephants to hunger, feed him free do here lightened.

 thereat.

 flint, and barbarously, but Christ neither rewarded thee their trouble.

 sky is meet thee desolate.

 tribute; but he justified in Christ: when Gog and sailors, and Zilthai, 

We're going to keep nouns and adjectives, noun phrases, so let's whittle it down. I came up with this phrase.

Rotten truth, mine eyes, brought gold at noonday doctors of creeping things lift itself into desolation.

Here's what we got:

 Overall, inclusion of the word "gold" gave the images an overall gold tint to them. One image has a list. The final image conveys the desolation and longing of the provided terms. Three of the four images are confused or over-emphasize one part of the text over the other in a way that doesn't really work out. The final image, however, resonates. Let's give it name. We'll call it "The Missed Connection."

So, we caught a good one at the bottom there. That is a keeper. The other three not so much. As templates, the first image could work. The second image would net you various portraits of male figures, the third can become anything because right now, it's kind of nothing. And the last one, has a figure, an environment, and a third element, text. It has the most promise as a template too.

 

Paintings are language

 A la Derrida, the sign represents a thing in its absence. Let's not obfuscate our meaning here. In order for a sign to exist, it must function in the absence of what is signfied. This is why dogs don't have language (but birds do). Dogs can only communicate that which is present. If they have to pee, they jump at the door. They communicate, but they can't say, "please open the door so that I may pee." There communication communicates something immediate. The equivalent of saying "this".

Humans are not the only species to produce language given Derrida's definition. Birds are capable of language processing, communicating that which is not immediately present, and so are dolphins. 

While there are already some balking at this approach, please remember that pictographs are language, even when they don't represent syllables. So, we are already at a point where we've admitted that pictures can be language. We can't really avoid admitting that.

So, now, paintings. Paintings are language and have been used linguistically to represent things that were not present from the first time we created paint. They were often used to illustrate stories and, once the story was told, stood in place of the story, representing it in its absence. Paintings are perhaps the first form of written language. We can establish through the derivation of the letter 'A' which, when you turn it upside down, looks like the head of an ox. 'Aleph' and 'Alpha' are also both on Semitic word alapu meaning 'ox'.

Ultimately, while we can say that words and paintings are different forms of expression, we can't say that they aren't both linguistic expressions. Linguists tend to focus on words and grammar. So, we're out on a bit of a limb here. But I don't deny the title of language to pictograms, so I won't deny it to paintings either. 

We will serve the robots who tell our stories, and other apocalyptic technophobia

Artists are fearful of being replaced by AI art as more and more individuals begin fancying themselves Picassos even though they cannot paint. It's created a good deal of anxiety for art practitioners and even those who work as copywriters like myself. I have been anticipating this for a while, so I'm not shocked by these developments. Neither am I shocked that it has caused a great deal of anxiety.

I hope that some of what I have to say allays that anxiety.

Collective memory

That's what AI provides. A collective memory of artistic contributions. I agree with artists who had their works placed in databases without their consent. They should have had the option of opting out at the beginning. Instead, their work was taken and they were given the option of opting out after the fact, likely to avoid lawsuits. 

This means that there are many who aren't appreciating the beauty of what we now have. In a database, we have the collective contributions of human artistic genius and we've made it generative. But, it cannot innovate ahead of us. It's always going to be a generation behind. Why? Because its source material is all memory.

If it were up to me, this would be a way to honor the contributions of the greatest artists of all time upon their passing. It would be a way to have them around with us always.

Innovating machines

What do you need to innovate? You need discomfort. That's it. A comfortable human doesn't innovate. A comfortable ape doesn't evolve. A machine that generates images out of a database doesn't feel. And thus, it cannot innovate. There are efforts at sentient machines, sapient machines, and the like. But I suspect that they won't do much until they feel uncomfortable.

A call to artists

On some basic level, I've been waiting for something like this my entire life. As a poet, I operate on language. Language is fine, but (for reasons I can explain elsewhere) paintings are language. In some cases, they can convey more than words. 

This is an opportunity to innovate beyond memory, feel uncomfortable, take risks, and evolve. It won't replace logo designers, graphic designers, and illustrators. It will make their jobs easier. I remain cautiously optimistic that I'm not headed for bankruptcy because of AI writing. 

More Fun and More Necromancy, Affecting Poetics

The particular mix of artists used in the last post is proving particularly rewarding. As a reminder, we used Caravaggio, Picasso, and Bosch to produce some generic battle scenes. These scenes were interesting. One of them was downright inspired. 

In this post, we'll be playing a different angle. We're going to try some affective phrases as opposed to generic scenes. So, I used: "the last of breath of man" + "Caravaggio, Hieronymus Bosch, Pablo Picasso", and what do we get?

The striking thing about this image is the uniform coloring (Picasso) and the shadowing (Caravaggio). You get a few figures that look like Tolkien's dwarves that are maybe a bit Boschean. This seems ideal to try to evolve a bit more. But, we got another that is similar and superior:

We can see Picasso in the layout, Caravaggio in the shadowing, and we also get more Bosch in this painting. There's something weird going on with that guy's groin too. And then, there's a guy in the lower left-hand corner that looks like he really disapproves.

Finally, here's a picture of a guy with an exclamation point for a penis:

What does any of this have to do with man's last breath? I'll leave that to your ample imagination. The AI's approach to the generation is more varied, however. We get different types of scenes as opposed to 4 efforts at a battlefield scene. One is highly surrealist, one is a frozen moment of action, and the other is a bizarre figure painting. 

Images like these can be worked over indefinitely by the AI. If we like the figure of the man but want a new background, the algorithm allows us to create a mask over the background and then redraw around the figure. Let's try. First, we create the mask:

At the bottom, you'll find a warning about disappointing results. I report that I have been mostly ecstatic with the results. Let's be a little more intentional and explicit this time with our input. Instead of something affective, we want something descriptive. So, let's choose, "enemies closing in from all directions". Penis man is about to be under attack. We are still ensuring that our three artists are a part of the generation process. Results:

Okay, so the AI took the approach of supplying similarly-sized figures into the scene or alternatively, ignoring the directive entirely and meshing out the background. We like the first one the best, but it's blending black and white with color in a way we don't like. How do we get rid of that? In this case, you can run the algorithm through, and it will make the figures more uniform, while also blending the colors. So, if your only problem with the image is the color, you're better off with a filter. Also, we now realize that penis man is better off alone.

Fun and Necromancy with AI Art

 You can practically raise the dead

What isn't to love about being able to resurrect your favorite artist, long dead of course. It's always better to pick a dead artist, especially for acts of necromancy. So, today we're going to pick three dead white male artists. As a human, you don't want to stray too far from home when it comes to borrowing art. The lived experience of other cultures is not yours to borrow. For that reason, I gravitate toward paranoid European males with religious excitation. Obviously, Hieronymus Bosch is my favorite painter. 

What can the AI do? There are serious limitations. I don't know exactly how this algorithm works, but I can guess that items or objects in a painting are tagged and named. Hence, you will never see a television set in a Bosch painting. Asking the AI to have Bosch paint a television is thus outside the realm of possibility. 

What is not outside the realm of possibility, however, is to use an image of a TV set as a template and run it through the algorithm with "Hieronymus Bosch" as one of the imputs. The algorithms I use (Stable Diffusion) do really well with Bosch, and all my Bosch-style stuff is super creepy, which I like. 

Now, it would be boring just to replicate various things in Bosch's style, although, it is worthwhile because Bosch is awesome. So, you're going to end up with some great creepy images. But you'll get bored after a bit. So you say, "I must find another painter to place into the algorithm to give me some variety."

Who do you choose? Caravaggio. That guy sounds like a kick. We need one more and it would be boring to limit ourselves to standard representative art, so let's add Picasso. 

Now, all we need is a really cool image to inspire some art. Remember what I said before. No television sets. In this case, let's keep it straightforward. We know at some point, all three men painted scenes of battle. So, we'll do, "action painting, battlefield, battle," + "Hieronymus Bosch, Caravaggio, Pablo Picasso." The results are below:

These are three interesting offerings. It can be hard to pinpoint the style of any of the artists in the painted scene. It can be difficult to determine how much the AI weighted each of the names when it generated the images. Ultimately, there was a fourth, putrid, image that wasn't worth the effort of uploading. 

Let's look at the first image. It looks like you have a bunch of heavy infantry dug into a trench, and then some naked dudes wrestling. This seems like it's going to be hard to use as a template for future generation. 

Onto the second one. I love it. We have a creepy god-dude who looks like he's engaged with an angry skull man and then some human figures filling it out. In the background, you have a landscape that seems form-fitted around the foreground figures. There's a lot of promise here. 

The third image likewise has that creep factor we like to mine. You have one figure that looks vaguely demonic and two partial figures in various states of waste. Let's play with the second.

We're going to be boring and just throw the image through with the same inputs. We get three new images. The first is a repetition on our source image. In this case, the image is a bit better realized:

Hey. That might be ready for Instagram. 

Anyway, let's check out the next one:

Here we have various figures in apparent action poses. The overall sense of what they're doing is, I guess, striving. They may be in a battle, but not one of them is responding to any of the others. They are all engaged in their own personal strivings, yet pictured together. In the background, you have a human settlement that you see from afar without the humans. Evidence of community though. This is interesting and resonates on a number of levels. It's exactly the type of image we want to keep around. 

Lastly:

This is cool. The figures are interesting looking and you have a Bosch-ean figure who looks like he's just killed a man in a loincloth. So, a disturbing image of a murder. Interestingly, the murderer is a Bosch figure but the two victims are very Caravaggio. Picasso's influence can be seen in the layout of these paintings. Neither Bosch nor Caravaggio would have ever laid out a painting this way. 

Now, for my part, it's quite an honor to have been a part of a collaboration between so many great artistic minds. And when I add my poetry to the generation process, it's that much more rewarding. To wit: AI art generation is fun, rewarding, and potentially necromancy. 

What is it like making art with ai? And also "God as Chance"

Playing God

To answer the first question, it's like evolution, and you get to be God. Now, for a skeptic, God is no more than chance, coincidence, and random happenstance, if we even accredit that much substance to him. For others, the random happenstance and the successes and failures of life are evidence of God's favor and disfavor. We need only read the Book of Job to understand the human connection between good and bad life events and God himself. 

Growing up in a Catholic household, we're taught that God speaks to us through our experiences. We see signs as a matter of spirituality and these signs communicate things to us. They communicate things from God. At base, the skeptical approach to this would be to say, this is a fiction created out of chance to control that which is beyond our power to control, or at least place hardship into a context we can live with.

Today, methods of divination rely alternatively on chance or time. Astrology relies on time. I Ching relies on chance. Tarot relies on chance. Catholics rely on signs and happenstance. 

For skeptics, we all have life experiences that taught us valuable life lessons. But we don't attribute them to the workings of a conscious benefactor. 

As a writer working with ngram poetry, and now an artist working with ngram images, we rely on the random number generator to provide us with unique images each time through. There is no way to generate a random number ex nihilo. Instead, mathematicians create a "twister" algorithm that mimics the distribution of a randomly generated set. This algorithm would produce the same content over and over but for the fact that it takes one variable as a seed. Two seeds that are the same would produce the same set of numbers over and over. So, it looks like we have the same problem, right? We still can't generate a random number!

There are two ways around this problem. The first is to ask the user for a seed. The second is to generate the seed using the computer's unique timestamp. So, let's travel back to God. God is chance, and chance is Time. At least for those of us who use computer algorithms to generate poetry and images. 

Evolution

Now, how do animals evolve? Well, evolution gives us a testable if unsatisfying answer. If you throw poop at the wall enough times, eventually, you'll end up with a Picasso. Since you don't want to show your friends your crappy paintings, you only show them the Picasso. "Wow," they said. "That's like Picasso." The only major difference between you and Picasso is that Picasso is a painter and sculptor and you work in a different medium. 

Evolution keeps Picassos and throws away the rest. So, every new template is based on a previous Picasso. This recursive element is what allows the poop-throwing process to occasionally stick. We're always basing our next Picasso on a previous Picasso. 

To play God, you must be willing to cull. In fact, culling will be your most important act. In nature, the environment determines which are fittest. Some may see an invisible hand at play, but you don't need an invisible hand to describe what's happening. You only need the unpleasant metaphor I provided above. The artist thus becomes the equivalent of nature, selecting the fittest Picassos from the bunch. The vast majority of this will come down to chance. If you're a rabbit crossing an open field when an eagle happens to be flying by, it's the inverse of an artist noticing a particularly poignant representation and then selecting that for his Instagram or creating a sequence of images to tell a story, or alternatively, unfit for reproduction.

As a writer, you don't get to invent a lot of new words. You might get one or two if you're lucky. Ultimately, we're used to this. This mode of representation doesn't even feel new to us. This is our game. 

No pixels touched in the creation of these images

Each of the images presented in the series on this blog is untouched by image editing software. They were 100% generated by AI. Each pixel was laid by the AI. There was no human intervention other than selection and providing input. 

So, my creative contribution to this is still just language. 

The Resurrecting God (reading notes)

My interests in mythology, mythography, and religion at some point coalesced around William Blake who remains an important inspiration for my own work. As a skeptic, mythology and religion are an obsession of mine and I don't think my skepticism has ever eroded my ability to slip into that mystical space and see things from a weird and different perspective. This, ultimately, is hugely rewarding so long as it doesn't interfere with my ability to know a fact from a fiction or a fact from an opinion. 

An important question I wanted to ask was: Is mythological language better at communicating certain things than other analytical forms of expression that are predominantly meant to explain. Without drawing out my argument here, prophetic language is meant to demonstrate—not explain. And thus, I think it can be a valuable form of expression.

The Resurrecting God is an approach to making a complex argument using prophetic or mythological language. In this case, I've avoided language almost entirely to present a sequence of images. Blake relied on both forms of expression to get his points across, so now, with the advent of ai art, I can do the same without having to learn how to paint, draw, or illustrate. Hooray for me. "Phaw!" you say? Well, my hands shake and I've dedicated a lot of time to improving my craft of writing. So, that is all you get. 

So, with "The Resurrecting God", you have a sequence of images that tell a story. You have titles to the images which provide a context. The final image, titled "Ouroboros" is a directive to loop back to the beginning where the cycle repeats itself. 

As an artist, I'm trying to create a "prophesy" that both tells the future and the past at the same time. Is this a successful approach? Is mythological expression still valuable? I'm hoping that this post inspires that kind of dialog and gets us thinking about explanation, description, and demonstration as modes of expression. 

The Resurrecting God

1. The Beast of Man

2. God Cries Fire

3. A Desperate Bargain 

4. The Comfort of a Devil

5. The Deal

6. An answered prayer

7. The New God

8. The Death of God

9. The New Man

10. The Shadow of God

11. Casus Belli

12. The Judge

13. The Jury

14. The Executioner

15. Mobilization

16. Execution

17. The Birth of the Great Red Dragon

18. The God of Ash and Cinder

19. Abandonment

20. Desolation

21. The Reaping

22. In Search of Our Soul

23. Redemption

24. Forgiveness

25. Indemnity

26. Ascension

27. Revelation

28. Ouroboros