Series: Fakes Page 9 of 11

“Proof” of Ancient Quatria, the Quantum Conspiracy, and Related Mysteries

These prior works by the Strandbeest artist Theo Jansen described in Wikipedia piqued my curiosity:

Flying saucer

In 1979 Jansen started using cheap PVC pipes to build a 4-metre (13 ft)-wide flying saucer that was filled with helium. It was launched over Delft in 1980 on a day when the sky was hazy. Light and sound came from the saucer. Because the saucer was black against a light sky, its size was difficult to determine. The police even stated that it was 30 meters wide, and some people swore they saw a halo around it. Jansen has claimed that this project “caused a near-riot”. He said that the machine was never found, and that it probably landed somewhere in Belgium. He later repeated the project over Paris.

Painting machine

Jansen’s painting machine was developed in 1984–86 in Delft, and it was a somewhat larger project than his flying saucer. It consisted of a tube with a light cell situated at its end. When darkness was detected, the machine would begin to spray paint, creating painted silhouettes of people standing in front of it. This machine was also attached to a large piece of wood that was hoisted against a wall, where it would move back and forth to create 2-D images of everything in the room.

Luckily, we have video from both:

Also, this is a bonus: someone else who made a two legged “centaur” strandbeest leg assembly in their garage who is having a good time:

Yes, There Really Was A Dublin AI-Generated Halloween Parade

By Tim B.

On 4 November 2024

In Other

Many sources have already reported on how a Halloween-themed SEO company’s website used AI to auto-generate content about non-existant related holiday events, including a Halloween parade in Dublin:

“Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin City Centre this evening or tonight,” the official social media account of the Gardaí posted last night.

“All those gathered on O’Connell Street in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely. Thank you.”

But what no one wants to admit, is that there was indeed a Halloween parade in Dublin, but that many people were not able to see it for various reasons. I have incontrovertible hard photographic proof here, something which is as impossible to fake as the original event listing. Here’s a sample below, with the full set at the link.

What most people don’t know is that in the mythological lore of Ancient Quatria, the pivotal Return of the Magicians to our world from the Hypogeum at the most chaotic and troubled time is at first not recognized. It is said that initially they would appear as ghosts or strange animals when they first arrived on our plane, strange and insubstantial… And that it would only be the children and the pure of heart who would be able to see them. And in doing so, in bearing witness using the eyes of imagination, their true bodies would be made fully manifest in our world, and likewise their magic too. So, no surprises here!

Live the American Dream in Canada

By Tim B.

On 10 November 2024

In Other

What started out as a one-off joke turned into a pretty good image set, centered around the theme of retro propaganda posters encouraging Americans to come live the “American Dream” – in Canada. More images at the link, and here are a few highlights below:

I actually am an American (and also a Canadian as of several years now) living in Canada, since summer of 2011, give or take. (Yes, Canada is everything you think it is).

I have a lot to say on this topic, but for now the images speak for themselves. I know a lot of people have a lot of anxiety about what happens next. One way I’m managing it is by willfully not checking the news anymore, because it’s all bad all the time… (and I feel way better for it).

But it doesn’t have to be this way, America. You could still come live the American Dream – in Canada. There’s still time to give us your tax dollars.

These images are mostly Ideogram, iirc, and a few scattered Dalle.

More to say on this topic another time. I’m just doing some house-cleaning here.

Photoshop Remove tool used on original painting & historical photos

By Tim B.

On 6 December 2024

In Other

I’ve been experimenting with the new-ish Photoshop Remove tool. And no, I didn’t completely quit Adobe like I hoped/promised, but I did deeply downgrade from the all apps pla to the Photography 20GB plan, and bought the Affinity suite of 3 apps at half price on Black Friday in order to fill in any other potential gaps of functionality as I work on other projects.

But I just wanted to share this one interesting early result where I ran the Photoshop Remove tool on a photo of a painting of mine:

For this I selected most of the original painting in the middle with the Remove tool, waited a few seconds and it spit that out, which I actually think is a very interesting piece in its own right, but also when paired like this with the original source material, to explore these sort of parallel latent versions of a given work, or even a historical moment. Reality isn’t going to be the same anymore.

Here’s a historical riff, removing the flag and pole from the famous Iwo Jima photo:

Outside comic or ironic uses though, the possibilities here get quite dark quite quickly. Consider this flung together xample from the famous Tianamen Square standoff moment – Tankman? What Tankman?

Similarly dark, but in a different direction: shooter, what shooter?

Nowadays, you don’t have to hire an army of re-touch artists to toss your old comrades turned enemies out of your pics anymore, you can do it yourself in a few clicks.

At the same time, I could see this tool and its deep hyperreality effects as being a potent tool for iconoclastic political critique in a world gone completely mad… Don’t like current political situation? Here’s a filter you can use to live in a parallel reality where that person/party/place/thing never even reaches your digital eyes or ears…

Plus, I think it would be pointless to try to regulate this. Where would you even start? To ask for that would be to invite tech companies to implement ever greater filtering and restrictions, and put more and more content decisions into the hands of AIs tied to corporate profit-engines. I mean, that’s going to happen anyway, but at least let’s not go begging for it. At least not until we’ve had a chance to kick the tires a bit before it gets nerfed.

CEO AID

By Tim B.

On 8 December 2024

In Other

Here is a satirical gen AI image set I made for a fictional event called “CEO AID” in which the top health insurance executives from the US recently banded together to perform an amazing cover version of 1985’s classic song, “We Are The World” in order to raise funds at Christmas time to pay for their private security details.

These images were made in Recraft, which is one of the front-runner image gen models right now, imo.

Full image set here.

(Feel free to share these on social media with attribution, and provided the watermark stays intact.)

A Few Highlights:

Happy Holidays!

[Also a related somewhat recent artist’s statement.]

Ask An AI Guy: Feeling Like A Fraud for Using AI Creatively?

By Tim B.

On 15 December 2024

In Other

A reader wrote in recently with the following question, which they gave me permission to post a reply to here, as I thought other readers might have similar questions. I also think it could be funny to have an “Ask An AI Guy” advice column. If anyone else has AI-related questions they want to ask and have me answer publicly, drop me an email at the contact form here.

The question:

I came across your article in Newsweek about using AI to write books. I found it incredibly interesting how open you were about using it as your creative partner in a sense. I’m currently enjoying using chatgpt to help form my ideas into slightly more coherent plot points. And it gives amazing feedback on my writing, possibly better than what a technical editor could give. But I can’t help feeling like a fraud. There’s a nagging feeling like, shouldn’t I be able to do this on my own? Before AI, didn’t writers have nothing but themselves to brainstorm, write, and rewrite? Have you faced this issue? Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks so much for any insights!

I answered part of this question I think in the Register interview here, but will recap that part briefly: working with AI has made me a better writer. Simple as that. It’s made me more objective about what’s a decent piece of writing, and does a given piece answer the particular need its intended to fill, and does my argumentation take the reader logically from A to B to satisfy that need?

“Before AI, didn’t writers have nothing but themselves…”

First, I would say that’s not true on its own: writers have always had other writers, editors, and other readers. I think the idea that writing is this heroic totally solitary activity is a bit incomplete, as it has always had a very social side.

Second, whatever happened ‘before AI’, we’re no longer living in that mythical before-time, just like we don’t live in a time before computers, etc. While doing things without it is entirely valuable and worth mastering for mastery’s sake, we now live *with* AI. One way to live in a time with AI is certainly to totally reject it. Another is to partially reject it for certain things, and use it for others. I think it’s just about finding what that fit is for you, the writer, and for your audience. For example, I wouldn’t want AI to take over the “fun” parts of writing – but your mileage may vary as to what is actually fun for you, and what can benefit from outside eyes – even if those are digital eyes.

Despite hundreds (thousands, really) of people calling me a fraud for using AI to tell new kinds of stories, it’s a feeling that I have never once myself actually shared. Sorry, I just don’t feel like a fraud. I don’t feel sorry, or cowed or threatened even when thousands of people tell me I’m wrong and bad. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but I don’t think so. It means really I’m able to listen to the intuitive voice and the creative light that guides invisibly my work, and much of my life, and unswervingly devote myself to that, even if others can’t see it or don’t quite get it. That light might tell some people to restrict how they use certain technologies, but mine tells me to find out by doing, to dive in and see, and talk about it with others. Following that light has not served me wrong so far – and if anything, it has made my life better and my work richer. If I stopped following that, that’s where I think I would get into trouble and start feeling like a fraud, because I will have given up on what’s actually actively true for me.

I guess my point is: if the journey is authentic, then so will be the end-product.

Hope that helps a little!

Cheers.

Gen AI Orb & Drone Video Set

By Tim B.

On 26 December 2024

In Other

I’ve been following with great interest the current “flap” around drones/orbs/UAPs being sighted in both the night sky and broad daylight around the United States and the world. A lot more to say there, obviously, but one experiment I did was trying to get OpenAI’s generative AI video tool Sora to create “convincing” fakes in this genre which would cleanly match what we’re seeing from users on the street.

I uploaded about a dozen or so video results to Imgur, which you can see at the link as they can’t be embedded easily here.

These videos end up being interesting in their own right, and even – dare I say – “artistic” at times. But what I found is they look pretty much nothing like the videos we’re seeing uploaded regularly to platforms like Reddit & TikTok, etc. Doesn’t necessarily mean nobody is using gen AI to enhance (or even generate) some of the effects we’re seeing in these videos, but if they’re doing it, I have yet to see one that could be easily explained away as “Oh, that’s just AI.”

Notes on Mysterious Plasmoids

By Tim B.

On 28 December 2024

In Other

Mysterious Plasmoids is the 124th installment in the AI Lore Books series. It is the first book I’ve done in the “Mysterious…” series in quite some time, and is another ‘ripped from the headlines’ hot take on what is happening with the drone/orb situation that is supposedly happening globally (I’ve not seen any anomalies first hand, myself). It also continues in another thematic subset of my books that relate to various aspects of UAP/UFO phenomena. This one heavily references other books in that cluster, if non-linearly.

There’s a vivid dream description of mine which fellow blogger Ran Prieur documented way back in 2005 here. In it I dreamt of a hyper-nationalist/fascist future US where police sirens played the song “America, the Beautiful,” and aliens had invaded in the United States… Excerpt below:

New York City had been divided into northern and southern zones, via a gigantic wall and forcefield. The southern half still had people living and working in it. But the northern half was completely off-limits. The official story was that aliens (space, not illegal) had taken over the northern half of the city, and the rest of the United States northward.

We knew, however, that this officially story was largely a fabrication. But that was all we knew. We had to roam about the lower half of the city, trying to find a passage to the north. And we had to do so without arousing any suspicions, which was an extremely difficult task. No one in the city would answer questions or help us.

And the police presence was total. You had to keep moving at all times. Any group of people who were stopping to talk or otherwise congregate was quickly spotted and broken up by patrolling police. […]

The police also had flying discs which they sent out after you. They were autonomous electronic devices which hovered and would track you as you ran. Once they were within range, they would fire an electric bolt at you to incapacitate you until officers arrived. The discs were called “temperplexes,” and they were all apparently controlled by larger motherships which flew higher and basically looked like UFO’s.

I actually continued that dream and spun out more variations using AI and published it in an earlier volume called, The First Days of Panic. That book, however, takes it visually in a much more fascist police drone direction (which, hell, I wouldn’t rule out just yet), whereas this book more explores the notion of plasmoids as heretofore unrecognized forms of life, which have interacted with us in myriad ways throughout history and prehistory: something more like John Keel’s ultraterrestrials. Are we living in the timeline now of that dream? Maybe?

Whatever the true nature of the “real” drones/orbs/plasmoids/UFO/UAP stuff that is or isn’t going on in our skies is, I think, a little besides the point; the point is the search itself. The point is the looking, and trying to understand all possibilities, and fit the best bets that seem to match evidence from reality itself.

Or, you know, in this case, hyperreality. Images in this one were mostly made with Ideogram and Recraft, with some dabbling in Grok’s image gen, and screegrabs from Sora videos, plus some remove tool in Adobe Lightroom. Text is majority ChatGPT with many human edits and improvements, told in alternating chapters between “first person” accounts, and quasi scholarly essays. Art preview below:

I might experiment in a subsequent volume with trying to embed animated gifs or even short videos from Sora if I can get the technology working adequately to share them. Ebooks don’t seem well-suited to that kind of thing, due to file sizes, though. So we will see what’s actually still feasible.

Using Photoshop Remove Tool to Create New Paintings

By Tim B.

On 11 January 2025

In Other

Accidentally discovered something very interesting while messing around with the Photoshop remove tool, which on certain settings uses generative AI to replace out whatever you select with it.

In this case, was just playing around removing stuff from a photo of our living room, and saw that the tool was inventing paintings or posters that don’t exist:

That one in the corner, I zoomed in on and went through a few AI upscalers with and got this altogether vague still “detail” shot of:

It’s not on its own the greatest image ever seen, but there’s something spooky about how it looks and its ultimate provenance as an AI re-inventing my physical surroundings… almost has a ‘paranormal’ quality to me somehow. I had the idea of like, could I take these AI-imagined figments, and then do like I did with my Matisse copy and make human-done reproductions? Either as faithfully as possible to the original, or else with some enhancements by the human artist?

Here are some other examples. This photo was from about halfway through last year, and represented all the paintings I’d done lately (minus two in another room).

The funny part is, this original real photograph had a couple gaps where there was empty wall space. So I went in to those two areas (marked with arrows in image above) and used the Remove tool in Photoshop on them, and it invented these two other paintings that it thinks look natural there.

Eerily, the one on the left actually shares a lot of characteristics with a paintings which I did end up doing later on, this one, the Head of Hygiea:

Photoshop got the color scheme more or less exactly right, a good bit of the overall “vibe” but it just wasn’t able to see into the subject matter. But otherwise, I’d almost call that “prescient.”

Here’s one last one for the road, two paintings in storage in my small basement studio from over a decade ago (depicted at bottom half of image below). And alongside you can see the progressively extended painting that the Photoshop Remove tool created over a few rounds of trying.

The forms and mark-making on these AI-interpolations don’t quite ring true with my actual painted works, and they aren’t quite snazzy enough yet for me to simply want to replicate them manually. But these are just early accidents and experiments. There is much hyperspatial painting to be explored and uncovered here still.