The Inclining Academic
For the past few years, especially when saddled beneath Covid's heaviest weight, I would hear people say things like, "2020 can just f**k itself. I am SO ready to move on to next year." I feel safe in assuming that at least four of my five readers have expressed similar thoughts. This is how I … Continue reading What Does It Mean to End a Year?
Yes, the title is hyperbole, but I just read Daniel Herman's "The End of High School English" in The Atlantic. As all three of my readers know, I have been playing around a bit with AI images, writing, and voice. Herman's article, which is very much worth the time, pointed me to ChatGPT, which he … Continue reading The End of Student Writing
I've been playing around a bit with setting poetry to music, especially canonical works that incorporate rhyme or rhythm in a way that offer themselves as being more friendly to the definition of "song" in a pop sense. There are poems rendered here that you will recognize pretty easily: "Prufrock," "Stopping by Woods on a … Continue reading Canonical Dance Party
A lot of change in my life right now (mostly good but definitely bittersweet), and I will need to retrain my mind to move outside of daily processes, positions, and pathways that have been absolutlely necessary for nearly six years. Put another way, changing current habits is hard. Remembering some cherished habits of old, while … Continue reading Poetry can be Music, with even more Music
You know the drill. Here is an AI-inflected remix of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Just click on the title of this post and shazam, the audio player will become visible. Midjourney rendering of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" "Get Out, Get Out Robert Frost" via GargageBand, via murph.ai, … Continue reading Get Out, Get Out Robert Frost!
I took an old poem of mine, "Liketown," and imported some complete stanzas and other reworked phrases into MURF.AI to act as pre-chorus and chorus elements (the verses are original stanzas). The voice I selected was dubbed "Terrell," who is described vocally as a "middle-aged male." My favorite voice on murf.ai In GarageBand I tried … Continue reading Another AI & Tech Experiment
I love to reread books. Even more, I love talking with people about how they re-experience works of art over time, whether it be rereading, re-viewing, re-listening, etc. A touchstone of conversation in this genre is JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, a book that a good friend of mine reads once a year. … Continue reading AI is not Ready for Holden Caulfield
Big day today, November 8th, 2022, with many big life changes coming for so many real people. The title here says it all: I used the simple prompt "Election Day" in Midjourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion. The algorithms give us the mysterious fortunes below. Midjourney calculates "Election Day" Stable Diffusion calculates "Election Day" Dall-E calculates … Continue reading AI Renderings of “Election Day” (Updated with Music Below!)
As I found myself in Pulaski, Wisconsin, walking out of parent-teacher conferences, I harvested a quick picture of the moon. Celistial body via iPhone Since I have been playing with AI art generators, I figured, "why not upload this photo, which is simultaneously mundane and cosmic sorcery?" So I did, using technology which also might … Continue reading The Moon is Always Miraculous
I'll keep this one short. I have always loved the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. Everyone knows her most famous poem: We Real Cool The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. … Continue reading We Real Cool (with Music)