Last spring, I taught a writing course in a maximum security prison. This was the first time I had ever done this, and it was a profound experience in ways I am not yet able to articulate. I can't yet describe it in a way that doesn't make it feel like I'm talking about myself, … Continue reading A Bit of Etheridge Knight
After a weightier post and experiment about race, today is light (but epic) fare. I am currently reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey, and it is proving just as good and important as billed. The Odyssey is a text that has always been significant to me. One of my undergraduate honors seminars was on … Continue reading Odysseus, Sacker of Algorithms
An interesting thing happened while pasting shorter poems into various AI Art generators (specifically Midjourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion). I don't quite know what to make of recent results, as I only superficially understand how such algorithms work. I decided to use Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" because I wanted to see if the word "Harlem" … Continue reading Dipping a Small Toe into the Idea of Algorithmic Bias
Well, today was a deeply dispiriting one for "chuck rybak" self portaits using AI art. Behold the below. This is what algorithms think of me and there is nothing I can do about it. Prepare... Stable Diffusion's renderings of "chuck rybak" Dall-E's renderings of "chuck rybak" And for the record... Chuck Rybak's rendering of "chuck … Continue reading The Nadir of AI Art
As I play around with AI art renderings for the first time, I received my Dall-E invite and wanted to do a quick comparison with Midjourney. As an easy first choice, and because I don't like easy descriptors, I reused Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." I entered the title and poem text … Continue reading A First Dall-E Comparison
