A Muppet Staring Into the Void

Mid-journey with Midjourney

The Muppets Stay Up All Night by Man Ray by Midjourney

Happy Waxing Gibbous Moon! I missed the First Quarter Moon this month, so I’m writing this before the moon is fully full. I don’t have an essay exactly, but I do have some roiling artistic curiosity to document.

Following some friends and many strangers, I’ve been playing with an artificial intelligence called Midjourney. Here’s how it works: using the platform Discord as an interface, you query Midjourney using the prompt “/imagine” followed by a description of the image you want it to create. Your prompts can include specific camera angles, artist names, styles, and mediums (to see the full array, here is an amazing Midjourney Prompter guide). By default, Midjourney generates an initial grid of four different image options you can choose to either upscale or to make variations from.

As you can see below, I like how the grids look as their own complete compositions. And as you can also see, I’m compelled by what Midjourney thinks of “The Muppets.”

There is so much more to say about AI-generated art, the nature of consciousness, and The Muppets as proxies for the human form. For now, scroll below to see pretty much as far as I got before my free Midjourney credits ran out (I’m definitely considering paying to keep going).

/imagine the muppets stuck in traffic on their way to burning man

/imagine the muppets stuck in traffic on their way to burning man by robert crumb

/imagine two people eating one pickle at the same time

/imagine the muppets eating pickles by frida kahlo

/imagine the muppets stay up all night by man ray

/imagine the muppets stay up all night by man ray (reloaded)

/imagine the muppets stare into the void by peter max

/imagine the muppets stare into the void by peter max. The second image above upscaled with multiple variations.