Two of the characters in these volumes are handsome hairy Jewish gay men from New York. They paired beautifully with style target Herman Melville, and with the erotic and just generally gorgeous style target Gustav Klimt in this video volume synopsis. One character is Irish, and another is Swedish, and their red hair also pair beautifully with Klimt. In fact all the characters pair beautifully with Klimt, who is generally more focused on women than men in his art, but love of the body flows through these images.
This of course is the 6th Volume of the 50 book series exploring AI generating a broad series of books exploring gay life for the last 50 years, set in 1981. If you’ve not seen other notes, the images, the text of the 300 page book, the synopsis and anecdotes, the spoken voice, and the software which created these volumes and this video are all 100% AI Generated, a sort of snapshot of what’s possible, the good, the bad and the ugly with contemporary tools.
I must have generated 5000-6000 images as I fixated on this volume, the images are so uniformly gorgeous and evocative, it’s a place where I’d so love to be, and visit, and inhabit. I’m calculating now how to use a robot arm to actually render these images with actual paint on canvas. We’ll see. I’m relentless.
Image in image in image: one of the unique features of this visual set is what might be called ‘recursive' images, which appear occasionally like visual toys. The beginning of the story has the characters following up on the cliff-hanger from the last volume, where a mysterious chest is found on the beach. (I directed one later episode to be a complete duplication of Gilligan’s Island because there are only so many stories on Islands). In the chest is a treasure trove of erotic (gay) photographs which the men examine minutely at the beginning of the book. Thus, you’ll see men looking at books of images, with images on the wall, and murals on the wall, image on paper, images as photographs, and if you’re clever you’ll see an image in an image in an image.
That’s a fascinating feature of the nature of the neural network that generates these images, a kind of ‘ring’ of the ideal that echoes within the image structure. Sometimes it’s not so nice - a chest with nipples can turn into a face with eyes, not unlike a Salvador Dali - but often it becomes so rich and altered, it’s hypnotizing.
Best Tattoos Ever: Whenever there is a surface in Klimt generation, the AI attempts to cover it with decoration, as did Klimt. With men on the beach, there’s lots to cover, and the output was many times absolutely gorgeous Tattoo effects, which any number of friends who are Aficionados would be proud to sport. Not Tribal, not Asian, not Carnival, or Naval, something else quite ineffable.
(I met a man in my gym yesterday who could have been the twin brother to this image. I showed them the video, and he gasped. Pure Northern Spanish he was, but absolutely the spitting image.)
Incredible Textiles: The last thing this series did was completely blow my mind with the variety and beauty of the… bathing suits! The patterns in this series are endless, and I immediately wished i could buy any of them. I’ll do a try this summer doing a digital fabric print of one and see how they come out. Endless.
3,4 Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA): There are a wide variety of substances which can induce visual hallucinations - Alcohol, Marijuana, LSD are some usual suspects, as are Molly and K, you may have read about ‘microdosing’ and all sorts of stories about alleviation of Depression, or PTSD, or any variety of conditions. One substance not talked about often is MDA, or colloquially called Sass. One of the striking features of this image set is a fairly interesting depiction of both the visual-field effects of Sass, complex geometrical moving and flowing patterns, but an almost approximation of the same skin sensations, as though you’d have patterns of sensations on your skin which were gold, blue, shifting, and immensely pleasurable. I used to call it showers of diamondlike orgasmic droplets flowing in pools and rivulets over every inch of your skin, giving you a full-body orgasm lasting 5 minutes or more. Not for everyone certainly, not quite what you’d read in How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan either.
I was very curious how the text by Herman Melville would come out. He’s one of the few absurdly gay writers I know which has never been claimed by the gay tribe (perhaps I’m out of touch. Here’s a bit of a note from him to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips – lo, they are yours and not mine.
Not quite “Wherefore art thou Romeo” but such feeling. His books always read to me staggeringly homoerotically. Can you imagine teaching this material today in elementary school, the traditional abode of “Moby Dick”, chapter 94 and I quote:
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Indeed. Critic Leslie Fiedler wrote an essay called “Come back to the Raft Ag’in Huck Honey”, about the foundation of American literature resting on the love of a man of European extraction with a man of African, or Asian, or Polynesian, or Native American ancestry. Melville of course had Queequeeg and Ishmael in the first gay marriage by Chapter 2. Don’t even get me started on Billy Budd and Claggart.
In the tempest-tossed year of 1981, the resplendent banner of many hues, conceived by the visionary Gilbert Baker in the year of our Lord 1978, ascended to celestial heights of veneration. As a beacon of pride and equality, this chromatic standard unfurled its glorious expanse across the firmament of the lesbian and gay community, shimmering with the iridescence of unity and defiance. Thus, did the Rainbow flag become emblazoned in the annals of time as an emblem of indomitable spirit.]
Very Herman Melville as an anecdote phraseing, and indeed throughout he begins to… alliterate. I have to go back to Moby Dick to verify the styling.
As the sun dips below the horizon, Fire Island's Cock Cove becomes a cauldron of carnal exploits and culinary conquests. Here, amid the sizzle of barbecues and the salty sea air, our reputed revellers Raymond Durand and Chuck Goldstein stoke the embers of an old dalliance, their bodies articulating the very essence of desire by the whispered ocean. Meanwhile, Tyler Adams and Lian Byrne, sculptors of both sand and seduction, craft nocturnal artworks under an indifferent moon, their entwined forms a testament to the throbbing pulse of youthful fervor. Each thrust and caress, a decadent verse in the epic of their simmering summer,
I’m all for indifferent moons, and throbbing pulses of youthful fervor full of decadent verses in simmering summer. Very 19th century Gay, I think. The specific hardcore version is quite something.
Enjoy the video clip, while it’s not the 300 page novel, it is very pleasant to drift through.
6) Summer Fluff: Melville/Gustav Klimt