JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY (1)

By: Joshua Glenn
October 7, 2022

HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn has been experimenting, recently, with Midjourney, an AI-generated art-making tool. We are pleased to share with you a few Josh-prompted MJ creations.

How does this app work?

“AI image generators create a cartography of a dataset, where features of images and texts (in the form of mathematical abstractions) are distributed at particular locations according to probability calculations,” Marco Donnarumma, who is a digital artist and a machine learning researcher, explains. “The cartography,” he goes on to say, “is called a ‘manifold’ and it contains all the image combinations that are possible with the data at hand. When a user prompts a generator, this navigates the manifold in order to find the location where the relevant sampling features lie.”

TOTORO-ZELIG

In testing MJ’s capacity to replicate various art and design styles, I’ve frequently used the figure of Totoro — a friendly Japanese wood spirit from Miyazaki’s 1988 animated fantasy film My Neighbor Totoro — as a quasi-scientific “control.” Already a protean shape-shifter, Totoro works well as a kind of Zelig figure, doesn’t he?

“Norwegian death metal album cover with Totoro” (9/1/22). Click for larger version.

“Totoro drawn colorfully and with many mistakes by Ralph Steadman” (9/1/22). Click for larger version.

“Totoro mandala” (9/21/22). Click for larger version.

“1915 painting of Totoro – in the style of Braques” (8/31/22). Click for larger version.

“1960s Soviet postage stamp featuring Totoro” (8/30/22). Click for larger version.

“Rodchenko poster with Totoro colorful” (8/20/22). Click for larger version.

“Totoro theater poster by David Plunkert” (9/9/22). Click for larger version.

“Totoro black-lite poster”(9/21/22). Click for larger version.

“Totoro drawn in ink and watercolor by Adolf Wölfli” (9/18/22). Click for larger version.

“Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with Totoro” (8/17/22). Click for larger version.

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JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY (1)

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