Stephan Ango coined the notion of the Idea Camera, where AI art generators would capture things that only existed on the substratum of our imagination(s), and give them a fixed and semi-tangible form.

This is still what amazes me about the experiences I’ve been having around coverage and reactions to my AI Lore books project. This is from El Tiempo:

The image preview they are using is from the recently released The Octave of Time, itself the sequel to The Lost Direction.

This is stuff I landed on courtesy of my imagination something ilke 3-4 years ago in some cases, largely due to my wanting to reclaim my own imagination as a “safe space” after working for years as a content moderator for a major web platform.

You could say Tob Gobble helped lead me out of the Hypogeum, and now here he is in one of his many curious forms (top right in the image grid) appearing in global news outlets, and Benda strumming the harp Eril given to him by the High Augur, which transforms into the Speaking Tree, Gennetatha.

I know that all sounds just like nonsense words to other people who are not initiated into the particular mysteries of Anthuor and Barbaro, and who don’t care to be.

But the point is, now they don’t have to be. We brought the dream to them. The lands I explored in my own imagination, and which Midjourney in this case helps to visualize now have a sort of existence all their own as they get replicated through information spaces across the web. As the story grows and evolves, and gets misinterpreted or intentionally distorted. These rooms in our imaginations we have opened up we can now share them, and walk around in them, talk about them together. Are they what we want them to be, what they could be? We can make them be.

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