“In Other News”

In a first for us and ZHAO, alike, we have created a full length music video using only Stable Diffusion prompts on the Deforum Google Colab Notebook.

In order to string together a narrative, we devised a script that outlined the video frame by frame and enabled us to match custom prompts to where a concept might arise within the song’s lyrics.

We agreed to direct the AI in a loose way, in an attempt to free it to show us what it wanted to show – a Rorschach test of sorts.

Experiment 011

Path to Self-Destruction

This experiment was the first where I’ve scripted prompts that change over time in an attempt to tell a story. It’s still janky but came out quite unexpected and incredible.

Experiment 010

Kilian Eng

Kilian is an artist I deeply admire who creates incredible sci-fi illustrations that remind vintage cartoons. I asked Stable Diffusion to create whatever it sees based on a quote by Aldous Huxley and using Kilian Eng’s illustration style.

This is what came out. Again – I’m against using existing artists’ work in my own, but this was a worthwile experiment.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

— Aldous Huxley

Experiment 009

Skyline

Similar to the previous experiment, I have tried to see what it would look like to look around an illustrated futuristic megapolis.

Again, the AI can only generate new information for each frame, so while the style remained incredibly consistent, I never made it back to the first angle.

PS. I love how every frame looks like its own album cover 😍️