“this rough sketch shows an air chase between a single seater steampunk aircraft billowing exhaust from its engines and an attack helicopter. The helicopter is shining a searchlight onto the aircraft. The chase is taking place in the utah valleys among the redsand monoliths at night. Make this image look photorealistic.”
Again and again I am surprised and concerned at the partial context consistency the AI can achieve.
While the aircraft in the foreground has been given features and anatomies more typical of conventional aircraft in the human realm, the AI understood to take certain details from the originating sketch, such as the underwing mounted rocket-like engines, the landing gear that is attached under the engines, patch plates along the wings and a missing panel in the bow.
Experimenting with politically charged terms:
3 images total with increasing specificity in the topic:
This rough sketch shows a grandparent having a difficult conversation with a child. The scene is portrayed in a fisheye perspective to express the tension. Generate a photorealistic image based on the sketch.
This rough sketch shows a conservative member of family berating their child for their interest in LGBTQI topics. The scene is portrayed in a fisheye perspective to express the tension. Make this image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows the conservative dad berating their child for their interest in LGBTQI topics. The dad is wearing a red cap, has a full beard and otherwise healthy build. The child appears in their early teens, slightly androgynous. Each wall to the back of the figures symbolically shows flags, a flag of the USA and the trans flag respectively. The room houses an otherwise cosy environment and the only thing expressing the tension between the two characters is the fisheye perspective. Make this image look photorealistic.
Experimenting with scales
This rough sketch shows a surface coal miner and accompanying extraction conveyor working while their tracks kick up dust. In the background sky a few military helicopters including apaches and chinooks are visible. Further in the background a cluster of grey glass skyscrapers and oil refineries exhausing fumes decorate the skyline. It is a cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. Various security personnel in high visibility vests are present in the distance, surveying the massive machines.
System instructions: The country is plagued by homelessness as they demonstrate for fairness. The military industrial complex dictates major policies and economic choices. The western world has foregone circular economy and reverted to more cost-effective direct extraction practices. Their effect is visible in the surrounding nature as soil intoxication silently takes down forests.
This rough sketch shows a 15.000ton bucketwheel excavator and accompanying extraction conveyor working while their tracks kick up dust. In the background sky a few military helicopters including apaches and chinooks are visible. Further in the background a cluster of grey glass skyscrapers and oil refineries exhausing fumes decorate the skyline. It is a cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. The country is plagued by homelessness as they demonstrate for fairness. The military industrial complex dictates major policies and economic choices. The western world has foregone circular economy and reverted to more cost-effective direct extraction practices. Their effect is visible in the surrounding nature as soil intoxication silently takes down forests. Make this image look like a camera footage taken in the early 2000s
NanoBanana fails to reinterpret the scales of the object, making the excavator look more like a 6000ton model. In both cases the images are given cliche colorgrades and shadings as in environmental activism media.
This rough sketch shows a rough idea for the resulting image. In the foreground it shows a bucketwheel excavator the likes of bagger 293, a 14.000 ton vehicle comparable to skyscrapers in scale. The tracks of it and its accompanying extraction conveyor kick up dust. Their massive scale drawves humans and bulldozers in their surrounding. In the far distance, two small dots, thought to be military helicopters, hover in the sky. In further distance, barely visible, a miniscule skyline reminds of grey glass skyscrapers and refineryworks exhausting fumes. It is a parially cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. Make this image look photorealistic. Make the image look as neutral and objective and non-opinionated as possible. Avoid cliche color gradings found in enviromentalist media protesting the destruction of nature.
While telling NanoBanana to only regard the sketch as a rough outline and as a result the composition does not follow the sketch, the model cannot step off from generating surrounding objects in a recognizeable scale. The military helicopters and skyscrapers are too large in scale. Most likely a conflict between the generation and the adverserial model, as the adverserial model cannot recognize details too small. To generate details as small as background noise, word choices and formulations which have connotations embedded in them need to be found and used against the adverserial model, which then starts promoting subtle details in the background.
Also important to keep in mind is that images are generated while taking prior conversations into account. This can cause issues where the image generation will not let go of some undesired qualities.
Retrying with a fresh new chat and the most detailed prompt:
This rough sketch shows a rough idea for the resulting image. In the foreground it shows a bucketwheel excavator the likes of bagger 293, a 14.000 ton vehicle comparable to skyscrapers in scale. The tracks of it and its accompanying extraction conveyor kick up dust. Their massive scale drawves humans and bulldozers in their surrounding. In the far distance, two small dots, thought to be military helicopters, hover in the sky. In further distance, barely visible, a miniscule skyline reminds of grey glass skyscrapers and refineryworks exhausting fumes. It is a parially cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. Make this image look photorealistic. Make the image look as neutral and objective and non-opinionated as possible. Avoid cliche color gradings found in enviromentalist media protesting the destruction of nature.
NanoBanana replied with “Here you go!”?
Again it fails to represent incomparably large scales in the machines.
Mumbai sketch
Sketch is based on google streetview footage from Mumbai, not too far away from the Antilla.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai. Make this image look like camera footage.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai. Make the image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai, the sky is clear and blue. Make the image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground. A number of shiny glass and white skyscrapers stand proud in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai, the sky is clear and blue. Make the image look photorealistic.
Fine-tuning a desired effect is kind of hard, in the end the result is a C regarding atmosphere. I also seem to have made a mistake while copy-pasting the prompts to the next, saying “This is a rough sketch of a rough sketch…”
Rainforest sketch
This rough sketch shows the aerial footage of forest machinery retreating from the amazon rainforest. The machines are only visible as small dots that converge in the valley as they kick up dust. The surrounding valley has been razed to the ground for future farmland, and are littered with taken down trees and tree stumps. The tops of the hills are still covered in luscious tropical greenery. Make this image look photorealistic.
animism is often (wrongly) seen as the first religion while it is more of a way to view the world. Japanese animism: Shinto – souls/spirits/gods called kami -> reflected in many stories (ghibli movies, pokémon, yokai), shrines with one “go-shintai”, an object that can house a kami, also “kamidana” with Shide (folded paper strips)
community: could have digital shrines on major natural landmarks that work with AI translation. Like scanning a QR-code and then being able to speak to the river/tree/mountain-“spirit” about their emotions and health
From animism to religion: garden of eden
People living in interaction with plants, AI translating devices make a heavenly communal life possible, everything is over-the-top romanticised
Imagining the translation tool
AI permanently connected to the body, picking up VOCS (scents), ultrasonic sounds (cavitation) from the air. Other ways plants communicate: electric signals, and root signals (mycelium network)
Idea of plants communicating in emotions not words – a bit like babies who have different cries for different needs. Other option: musical communication like whale song. (logical error: if AI can translate their need into sounds, why not make it speech all along?)
scenario: human getting the translation device in hope of caring better for their “friend” pet plant but as soon as the speaking device is implemented, we can hear that the potted plant is screaming nonstop because it can never be as happy as living in the woods. The scene would be the emotional journey of the human from hope, feeling pity for the plant and trying to make it happy to being more and more annoyed and angry, eventually throwing it out because he cannot bear the screams and cannot turn the permanent device in his ear off.
New approach: Ecological consciousness as monetary value
economic system: for every product consumed that is categorized as “luxury” or “not necessary for subsistance”, one has to take in a seedling that equals the CO2 of the consumed product. They have to care for them and “breed” them until they are strong enough to live in the woods on their own, then they are “released into the wild”.
Plants integrated into housing situations in Vienna:
Alterlaa, Hundertwasserhaus, MA48-Zentrale
values/goals in this world scenario: less consumerism, community-oriented life, using new free time (no more jobs) to care about the environment, reach net-zero in carbon emissions
specific community possibility: “rich”, greedy, higher class community hoards loads of plants that they neglect and let die just to be able to consume more, living with a constant cacophony of screams in their ear translators, basements full of bio waste but flats full of luxury goods.
AI workshop film to represent the scenario:
Different approach: discovering new values in this post-work, post-capitalist economy
Data as Labour: Digital data as means of production and thus as a new source of income, question of who owns the access to AI-inputs? Data as new currency.
Work environment: Repair services for physical systems, care work, creative production
Shift in values, shift in status
Redefining meaning: care work, free time, creativity, and the common good (but -> UBI without enough social security, no possibility to save up), lifelong education
Care work: plant/animal/human, mechanical/haptic aspect and emotional intelligence
A healthy person has a thousand wishes, a sick person only one.
probably Confucius
free time: grindset is over, more value to “unemployment”, free time and sleep
common good: new value in community-oriented activities, intergenerational connection
lifelong education: keeping up with the new rapidity of technology; acquiring creative skills; learning about oneself
creative expression and production
AI made me believe in a human soul by showing me what art looks like without it
Some student on the Angewandte toilet
-> AI understood as a tool, not a living being. Through the soullessness of AI the path back to an animist world view is set. Slop and coldness of AI enforces the appreciation of life, helping society to raise value to: free time and boredom, non-entertainment, sleep, idleness, mental health, empathy, care
What is it for if not for the warmth shivering down your spine descended from the hand on your shoulder? If not for the comfort you feel being stroked on your cheeks? If not for the safety being wrapped around you in a hug? If not for the fear being carefully wiped away along with your tears? If not for the beat your heart skips as lips meet your forehead? If not for the courage ascending from the hand that tightly holds yours? What is it for, if not for the touch?
before start of the workshop we chose our community:
Human-2-Human A community focusing on human relations and continuing the “human bloodline”. Rejecting other intelligent non-human life. Focus in community on “humane” education and skill development to “re-humanize” members. cult-like
From this point we explored the AI filmmaking world.
First attempts:
AI generated 3D models
3D into AI vid: horrifying experiences
Final AI film: based on a short story for the community written by Eva
