Category: Art

Posted on

My Latest Folly

I discovered I had two leftover shadow box frames from my Minidisc project last year. I thought I’d switch it up a bit so I searched everyone’s favorite auction site for “Parts Or Repair” portable CD players. This one came up for $20 and I figured it was worth it. If it did work—or I could get it working, I could easily flip it (because I didn’t really need another portable player), but if not, I could put one of those shadow boxes to use.

Obviously I couldn’t get it working. The disc would spin, the laser would search for the table of contents and then shut down. I tried adjusting the laser gain and focus controls, but to no avail. It wasn’t a great player by any means, but it was pretty and therefore it went into the “art” category.

This model is a strange beast. It fell in the transition period between the all metal mid 80s players (that I adore despite their lack of skip protection) and the all plastic era of the 90s. The case is all plastic, but lacks any sort of skip protection, and the innards more resemble the metal models than the plastic ones, what with the multiple circuit boards and connecting wires that ran everywhere.

0 Comments

Posted on

Back At It

This one—a player that was a total lost cause—is a surprise gift to be sent to my tech who repairs this shit for me. I think he’s the only one in my circle who can appreciate it.

Posted on

Granodiorite Head Of Amun

Carved in dark granodiorite, this commanding head of Amun bears features closely aligned with those of Tutankhamun, marking it as a royal commission of his reign. Though acquired in Cairo in 1907, the sculpture was almost certainly created for Karnak, Amun’s great temple at Thebes.

The head belongs to the young king’s programme of restoration, undertaken after the upheavals of the Amarna Period, when Akhenaten had defaced or dismantled the god’s monuments. Here, Amun is restored not only in stone, but in presence; his divine image once again fashioned with care, permanence, and royal authority.

Continuously exhibited and widely published since its acquisition, this fragment stands as a quiet testament to Tutankhamun’s role not merely as a boy king, but as a restorer of tradition, order, and the ancient gods.

Tutankhamun and the Restoration of Amun

Tutankhamun ascended the throne as a child, and the reins of power were likely held by senior courtiers and priests, who guided the kingdom back toward tradition after the religious upheaval of the Amarna Period. Born Tutankhaten, “the Living Image of Aten,” the young king soon changed his name to Tutankhamun, signalling the formal restoration of Amun and the ancient pantheon.

Under Akhenaten, Amun’s temples had been closed, his images defaced, and his supremacy deliberately diminished in favour of the solar Aten. The return of Amun restored not only a god, but the balance of divine order, temple economy, and royal legitimacy; an act as political as it was pious.

Amun, Head of the Egyptian Pantheon

Amun rose from a local Theban deity to become king of the gods, embodying creative force, hidden power, and divine authority. Often merged with Ra as Amun-Ra, he ruled not through visibility, but through presence; “the hidden one” whose influence permeated all things.

His vast temple complex at Karnak stood at the heart of Egypt’s religious and economic life, and devotion to Amun underpinned kingship itself. To restore Amun was to restore Egypt’s cosmic equilibrium, where gods, king, and people once more moved in harmony.

[source]

Posted on

Oops, I Did It Again

And another junk unit finds a second life outside the landfill or a spare parts bin. This one looked simple but it was a bitch to get apart. There is no service manual to be found anywhere on the internet so I had to wing it.

By the time the E630 came out (2004) Sony pretty much had this tech down to a science, and judging by the amount of plastic employed in this model, they were gearing up for cheap, mass production. It initially sold for ¥21 000 ($89 in 2004). And then the iPod happened.

Posted on

Near And Dear To My Heart

The prompt: Show me the star Rigel and it’s double companion sun from the surface of a planet orbiting at 2000AU distant. Provide planetary atmosphere (blue sky) and red vegetation.

Posted on

The Hitchhiker

This is one of my favorite paintings, done in…1979?

Getting a version from ChatGPT took a lot of work. A dozen iterations and it’s still not exactly what I want, but it’s damn close.

For some reason it really wanted to put the guy in the road instead of off to one side.  The trouble is, with each generation it changes the car itself.

By the time I finally got the perspective right, and the hitchhiker the proper distance down the road, the vehicle had completely morphed into something that bore little resemblance to my original painting.

Maybe the guy just can’t get picked up, and these are all separate cars…

Posted on

I Don’t Know If I Should Be Flattered Or Outraged

Prompt: Make photorealistic using color palette of original image. Place two suns in the sky and make both characters male.

My original painting from 1979.
How ChatGPT interpreted it.
My original painting from 1980.
ChatGPT’s version.
My sketch from 1977.
Chat GPT’s interpretation.
My painting from 1985*
How ChatGPT sees it.

I know what I’m going to be doing for a while.

That being said, ChatGPT does manage to come close to my original vision for these pieces, although it misses details here and there. I don’t hate them, and truth be told I’m kinda surprised at just how good they all turned out. I’m sure I can get them even better if I add more to the prompts.

*This was painting based off what came to me in a meditation one afternoon. I was sunning myself on the deck of an ancient Egyptian vessel in the Mediterranean, when all of a sudden I heard a strange noise in the distance and saw the white vehicle appear on the horizon and fly overhead.

Posted on

ChatGPT

Prompt: Make this photorealistic.

My original sketch from 1977.
GPT’s photorealistic version.
My original sketch from 1977.
GPT’s photorealistic version.

I don’t hate them…

Posted on

The Weird and Wonderful (World) of AI Art

Kind of reminds me of the works of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (whose work I adore, by the way).

If you like the look of this, check out The Electric State (Netflix) and Tales From The Loop (Amazon Prime); both projects where Stålenhag was directly involved. And Tales also features the music of Philip Glass. ????