Cultural Reverse Engineering in Midjourney
Explore biases and propose a different approach.
First, realize you are tapping into a semi-complete overview of Western culture. You can now explore how culture is portrayed from a bird-view perspective by generating prompts that contain references to styles. Then, realize that this crystal ball is biased.
Let's compare
Sally Mann, is an American photographer known for her black-and-white portraits of her family and documentation of the landscape of the American South. Since the 1970s, she has produced a series of photographic portraits, landscapes, and still lives and is best known for her intimate portraits of her family, including her three young children and husband.
Original Sally Mann portrait
Note the unique moment that captures how a mother and an artist see her daughters - or enables them to be seen and how they present themselves to her. Questions of intimacy, autonomy, womanhood, and emotion prevail in this image.
Midjourney generated portrait
/imagine a portrait inspired by Sally Mann style. --v 5.2
Midjourny /describe - original image
/imagine the girls stand next to a carriage and two dolls, in the style of Sally Mann, Hasselblad 1600f, George Inness, photo, leica I, DebbieDebbie Criswell, disfigured forms --ar 128:103
Who sees what? Are these empty gazes that bother only me?
The cooking metaphor
Artists' styles are poured into a mixer. Looking into the crystal ball of the image data set requires putting aside personal aspiration of a unique signature; once you do that, you are free to explore and investigate. Each style becomes a flavor, but not just artists' styles; any famous character can be a flavor, too.
Ralph Angus McQuarrie was an American conceptual designer and illustrator. His career included work on the original Star Wars trilogy, the original Battlestar Galactica television series, the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and the film Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award.
Original Drawings
Match dress and style - Midjourney
/imagine high fashion dress inspired by Ralph Angus McQuarrie style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail
Rematch offspring
/imagine high fashion dress inspired by Karel Appel style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail
Add a persona to the mix
/imagine Audrey Hepburn dress inspired by Ralph McQuarrie style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail
/imagine Amelia Earhart dress inspired by Ralph McQuarrie style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail --v 5.2
Or brand
Sally Ride dress inspired by coca cola style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail --v 5.2
/imagine Sally Ride dress inspired by coca cola style. sigma 85mm f/8, high detail --v 5.2 Note that the brand style year was selected by Midjourney according to the persona
Bias
The way women are portrayed is rooted in classic pin-up images that adorned the noses of bombers and the walls of soldiers barracks in the 1940s and '50s Using styles as prompts without learning how to overcome biases is fruitless. Without crafting your own 'recipes' that conjure something 'new?' from a meeting between styles and inspiration - It can cannibalize culture by spiraling into a repetitive act of reproducing the same culturally perceived originals.
A different approach - creative assistance instead of creative replacement
TextFX is a new AI experiment from Google that uses the PaLM 2 large language model to generate creative text formats. Included are 10 tools meant to aid in the creative writing process. Lupe Fiasco, who Google collaborated with on the creation of TextFX, explains how it works and how it can create inspiration. Such an approach that incorporates the creative person within the process and offers tools to generate inspirational possibilities, not an outcome - is a healthier approach to image generation in the A.I. era.