Automated whimsy and scenery

 kw: experiments, artificial intelligence, simulated intelligence, art, generated art, images, prompts

The set of prompts I used for the next montage leans toward the whimsical. These took a bit of extra negotiation to achieve the looks I liked. In clockwise order from top left:

1. Many minions merrily marching through a forest meadow
2. a very hilly landscape with many antique clocks, digital art
3. a very hilly landscape with many antique clocks, digital art [2nd Generate]
4. a fantastic library with thousands of books and many patrons

Since the screening of Despicable Me the word "minion" has never been the same. The two "clocky landscapes" arose from a family hobby of collecting antique clocks. I keep only two old clocks running. When I was in high school, my father had 25 mantle clocks running in nooks that held my mother's collection of paperback books, plus a cuckoo clock on the wall. All chimed. Noon and Midnight were noisy! I feel a certain affinity with Jorge Luis Borges, who said, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." Although I asked for "many patrons" I see no more than ten, and many of those are sketches that look more like odd piles of books than people.

I also got to wondering how the "city of God" as described in The Revelation, the New Jerusalem, might look if it were a real city (the apostle John called it a Sign). It is described as foursquare, and as high as it is wide, a kind of golden mountain. DALL-E came up with all kinds of peculiar things, so I asked for "Mont St Michel by morning light". The two top images of the next montage are from outpainting the result, which is close to, but not exactly, like certain photos of the city. The first is as "we" produced it, and the 2nd is adjusted to look more golden. The lower two images began with the prompts,

A painting of a wide landscape with mountains around the edge and a domed city
A small town in a wide valley with snowy mountains in the background, realistic painting

My wife collaborated in the choices to produce the last one (lower right). We liked it well enough to have it printed in a size that fits a frame I had handy, and it hangs near oil paintings by my father; it is similar to his style.

Producing each of these took between six and ten credits, and time from a half hour to an hour. Considering how long it used to take my father to paint a landscape, I have the satisfaction of producing an image rather quickly, to gain more time to think over what I might do next.