Le Voyage/AI

The concept behind this series is to take poetic control at the level of the language prompt when using AI to make pictures. I wanted to avoid any transactional-type prompts with specific goals in mind, such as color palette, artistic style or iconography. Using the AI software DALL-e, I input text from the poem Le Voyage by Charles Baudelaire. I chose this poem because it comes from a time when electric street lights were still unknown, and because it is an emblem of romantic poetry and fuzzy thinking. Drawing from the poem’s verses, DALL-e, generated the images below. These were all done in a single afternoon. A week later the identical prompt generated a completely different set of pictures, all of which lacked the air of mystery and imagination of the first series.

While I am not a great fan of AI imagery, I am satisfied with how this project is going thus far. I like the tone and feel of the images AI generated and I’m excited to transfer the ideas to canvas using oil paint as a medium.

This is the prompt that generated the images:

Le Voyage by Charles Baudelaire

To a child who is fond of maps and engravings
The universe is the size of his immense hunger.
Ah! how vast is the world in the light of a lamp!
In memory's eyes how small the world is!

One morning we set out, our brains aflame,
Our hearts full of resentment and bitter desires,
And we go, following the rhythm of the wave,
Lulling our infinite on the finite of the seas: