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Introduction
This year will surely be remembered as the year generative AI models went mainstream. OpenAI, for example, wrapped a large language model (LLM) in a simple chat interface and BAM! Two months later, 100 million people around the globe were using ChatGPT and becoming 10x more productive.
The magic of AI was addictive. It did things in mere seconds that normally took me days, weeks, months. Amidst the throes of extreme productivity, however, I began to wonder, “Do I even want to be more productive?” I quickly realized it didn’t matter because AI was on its way to entirely replacing me at my job, so I brushed off my cocktail skills (we’d always need bartenders, right?), and I started asking a different question.
We had effectively unleashed a new species that for better or worse was more capable and more creative than an individual and soon more so than all of us combined. What does it mean to be human now? And, when met with silence, I winced imagining the impending global existential crisis.
In typical Mav fashion, I looked to philosophers for ways of thinking and fine art for ways of expressing. Ironically, AI joined me on this journey, serving as my researcher, paintbrush, and… companion. This book is a collection of the AI art I generated in 2023 to cope with my life as it was unfolding within this new reality: human exceptionalism, my exceptionalism was dead.
I created these pieces using Midjourney in a private Discord server. Midjourney combines an LLM with a diffusion model to convert text into images. Each piece went through 100s of iterations as I experimented with words, syntax, and post-processing directives to capture the concept in my mind. Alongside each piece, you’ll find the final input prompt and quote that generated and inspired its creation.
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And freedom, oh freedom,
Well, that’s just some people talking,
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.
Eagles, “Desperado”
Prompt: /Imagine
Two clear plastic containers against a white wall. Each container has a single colorful fish in it. The fish are looking at each other from separate containers.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus, “The Rebel”
Prompt: /Imagine
A surreal illustration of a woman in a knitted red hat with rosy cheeks looking up, engulfed in a crowd of men in grey hats, shot from above, centered in frame.
All the purposes I had imagined have given way. Yet, I am still quite young and surely have enough strength to go again. But what ambition must I contrive this time? I am alone in this white street lined with gardens. Alone and free.
Adapted from Sartre, “Nausea”
Prompt: /Imagine
An intricate illustration of a confined yet infinite white street lined with elaborate garden mazes and Mobius strips. Aerial view shot at dusty dawn, chaotic surrealism with flowers and pops of colors.
When we see ourselves from the outside, all the contingency of our aims and pursuits becomes clear. Yet, even in the recognition of inconsequentiality, we do not disengage from life. Therein lies our absurdity.
Adapted from Thomas Nagel
Prompt: /Imagine
A night photograph of the exterior of an all-glass apartment building full of both orange chairs and people on their computers wearing orange jumpsuits.
You will always struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe, and if you try it, you will be lonely often. But (remember this) no price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself.
Adapted from Nietzsche
Prompt: /Imagine
A silhouette of a woman walking towards a coast through butterfly netting, backlit by the sun with lens flare, dystopian surrealism, whimsical chaos, symmetrical in frame, fisheye effect.
One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.
Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”
Prompt: /Imagine
A toddler surrounded by feminine products, shot from above, scientific knolling.
The Other is the hidden death of my possibilities.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Being and Nothingness”
Prompt: /Imagine
A chiaroscuro portrait of Simone de Beauvoir casually sitting near a mirror with a shadowed figure in the background, patterned fabrics, off center in frame, bright camera flash, black and white, Hasselblad H6D-400C.
So many times, it happens too fast, you trade your passion for glory. Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive.
Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”
Prompt: /Imagine
A vanitas still life of a white 1990s desktop computer, keyboard, mouse, shadowed skull, white flowers, candles::2, dusty decay, desaturated, shot on a 50mm lens, centered frame, black backdrop, studio lighting.
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird”
Prompt: /Imagine
A mugshot of a pale, austere brunette woman, staring directly at camera with a dried Mondrian painting on her face in the style of surgical markings. Neoplasticism.
What if, in the pursuit of meaning, we are met with only the indifferent silence of the world?
Adapted from Albert Camus
Prompt: /Imagine
A woman standing knee deep in a vast tropical sea with subtle motion, a few others in the far distance, cumulus clouds in a vibrant high afternoon sky.
We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other. But it doesn’t. We are terrorized, flattened by trivialities, and eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski
Prompt: /Imagine
A single stiff butterfly that has been painted white and pinned against a white wall that is being smashed by a flyswatter, splatters of blue paint, scientific lighting.
It happens (sometimes suddenly) that the stage set collapses: the why arises from your heart, and in your weary amazement, life finally begins.
Adapted from Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
Prompt: /Imagine
A woman dancing in a collapsing butterfly net. Star trails and long exposure, backlighting from a setting sun, dreamy evening lighting.
If I admit that life depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.
Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
Prompt: /Imagine
A portrait of Albert Camus posing casually in front of a vintage carousel, slight smile, centered in frame, retro nostalgic colors, glowing string lighting, 135mm lens.
It is necessary to fall in love… if only as an alibi for all the random despair you’re going to feel anyway.
Albert Camus, “The Rebel”
Prompt: /Imagine
A dancing doll couple with romantic drama and emotions, in the style of Danse Macabre and tenebrism, elaborate and formal costumes, pink pastel and desaturated tones, front stage lighting, 85mm lens.
Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss… Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Kierkegaard, “The Concept of Anxiety”
Prompt: /Imagine
A nauseous woman wearing a white dress on a spinning carnival ride under spinning white clouds, angled up, pastel and deep blue hues, disorienting and dreamlike.