I am sitting here with access to OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 tool, some free credits and feeling ready for a lark.

Context

First, let’s set the scene:

What is DALL-E 2?

An AI that has been fed a lot of images in order for a human to write a free text prompt and create some original art or image.

I probably should add that almost certainly the training data used to make these images are biased, you can read smarter people than me about this issue but certainly worth looking into. Likewise, there are deep concerns about art created from parroting real artists. Interesting topics but will not dive deep into these for this silly blog post.

What should I try to create?

I’ve just listened to an amazing podcast which smushes a lot of my interests together.

It combines history, comedy, time, politics & Geordie’s. I’ve pulled out x3 interesting snippets and I’m going to try and see if I can visualise these nuggets! WARNING: This web page is going to be very very very heavy with images! I’ve tried to compress them but am very sorry if this page has taken a zillion years to load.

How?

There are a couple of resources that I am using and highly recommend:

• I spent $15 in DALL·E 2 credits creating this AI image, and here’s what I learned blogpost
• DALL-E 2 prompt guide

The Experiment

I’m going to try explain why I’ve picked the subject. Then I’m going to co-create some accompanying image/art for it.

Time Heist

Many moons ago the Roman Republic was having a war with the Carthaginian Empire. The First Punic War is raging over on the island of Scilily. The Roman spoils of war is a sun dial which gets plonked on a column in the centre of Rome. This was Rome’s first sundial and would spark many more popping up across Roman lands.

Not everyone loved it though and the regiment of time began to intrude on people’s lives. Much to the annoyance of some. A playwright of the day writing:

The gods damn that man who first discovered the hours, and—​yes—​who first set up a sundial here, who’s smashed the day into bits for poor me! You know, when I was a boy, my stomach was the only sundial, by far the best and truest compared to all of these. It used to warn me to eat, wherever—except when there was nothing. But now what there is, isn’t eaten unless the sun says so.

Interesting. Lets see what a machine & I can concoct…

Results

3x attempts to reach something reasonable. First round a bit of a dud but tweaked the prompt to be:

A gloomy old man wearing a toga, shaking fist at a sundial, outdoors, in Roman Empire, in the style of an ancient Roman painting

My favourites are…

I also tried one in the style of “ancient Roman mosaic”.

Smelling Clock

We’ve not always used dials for our eyes to sense time. We’ve had cockerels to cock a doodle do us in our ears. We’ve also used our noses apparently…

In essence different smells can indicate different times. Perhaps this already happens as the faint whiff of coffee or freshly eaten cheerios indicate morning in some parts of the world. Just googling this I am finding the idea is not dead, this decade the Guardian wrote Wake up and smell the bacon-scented iPhone alarm clock and 2,685 people investing in a smelly alarm clock.

Lets try be a bit more expressive and let DALL-E 2 be a bit wilder with what a smelly clock could be…

Results

X4 total attempts. Spoiler: this doesn’t go well.

Just using:

A smelling clock

Produced these types of images…

Fine but could get something more fun. Sadly “Exciting, psychedelic, smelling clock” didn’t produce anything but multi-coloured looking clocks.

A big nose smelling an exciting, psychedelic looking clock from the future

Produced some interesting responses…

I continued with playing and to be honest they got progressively more haunting.

A lady smelling a clock, medium shot, low angle, golden hour, in the style of Dr. Seuss

When I tried “Dada clock shaped like a nose” it got more disturbing.

I resigned to failure after trying “Art Deco poster for a clock shaped like a nose”.

Verdict. Fail. I couldn’t get the prompt to WOW me. Instead everything just seemed too literal.

Grandfather Clock

The name of the “grandfather clock” actually comes from a song. A song about how the tick tock of a 90 year old’s clock matches the same beat of his life. Johnny Cash even did a rendition:

So with that wholesome image in our heads lets try recreate a beautiful scene.

Results

OK… first results don’t scream wholesome…

Johnny Cash singing with his back against a grandfather clock

Maybe a little better?

More improvements with “Johnny Cash playing his guitar next to a grandfather clock” but not giving me the sweet wholesome quality I’m after…

I then tried a variation of “A wholesome Johnny Cash playing his guitar next to a grandfather clock in the style of Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli)” which did produce something relatively interesting that borders sweet.

Just to be wild I thought let’s bow out with something a bit more rock’n’roll. Those are good but I’ve got 1 credit left and lets see roll the dice one final time.

Johnny Cash playing his guitar on top of a grandfather clock while playing in a prison that is on fire

Produces…

Overall, not bad actually. Not perfect but largely these Cash inspired images hit my brief quite well.

Conclusion

Well that was entirely superfluous. Some might say it was a waste of time, I would say listen to the podcast and reimagine what time and timekeeping means.

In relation to DALL-E 2, well it’s scary and fun. I was entertained by it but obviously it sort of requires the human to be trained on how best to prompt to illicit the best images. If you hate the images produced, blame machines.