The Synthographic Singularity

A new AI art form bends reality into a pretzel: Is this good, evil, or meh?

The Cyborgs of Bloog (1974), a forgotten science fiction classic.

The New York Times ran a fun editorial today, “This Film Does Not Exist,” by Frank Pavich. Parich explores AI art, looking at stills, generated by Midjourney, of a non-existent version of Tron, as it would have been directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1980s. Pavich made Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary on the lavishly expensive science-fiction spectacle that Hollywood didn’t allow the auteur to make, even though he had just released his acclaimed opus, Holy Mountain, and had recruited Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger as co-stars, plus Pink Floyd for a soundtrack and HR Geiger to design one of the planets.

I loved Jodorowsky’s Dune as an experiment in creative imagination. Although the film was never produced, hearing different people talk about what it might have been, including Jodorowsky himself, gave one a vivid impression of this non-existent masterpiece. After watching the documentary, I almost felt I had seen this missing Dune. I understood what place it held in cinema history. I suspect Jodorowsky’s Dune is better that way: As a film you can direct, produce, and art-direct inside your own head.

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Orson Welles acted together on The Cyborgs of Bloorg. We see them together in this rare production still.

Like some of you, and many of my friends, I have been obsessively playing around with AI art, particularly MidJourney. I have some thoughts on where this rapid creative evolution may be taking us. I consider it a new art form. I like the new term, Synthography, to define it.

My triumphant AI art moment, so far, came when I borrowed a batch of images I found on Facebook, made by the talented, madcap synthographist Anerican Pastoral, and posted them to Instagram as a prank. If you didn’t examine them closely to note six-figured hands and three-legged celebrants, the photo series seemed to reveal a distant precursor to today’s Burning Man festival.

"Beau Flambeau," 1920s forerunner to today's Burning Man festival

As accompanying text, I wrote:

An extraordinary treasure trove of original Burning Man images from the 1920s has just surfaced on the Internet. Until now, only a handful of scholars knew about the secret origin of the festival, a century ago. It was started by a neo-pagan/Crowley-inspired cult of black-and-white film actors from Hollywood, The Society of Beezlebub. The Society was led by a decadent Austrian aristocrat, Volker Schlarf, later to die tragically of erotic auto-asphixiation. The original name of the festival was “Beau Flambeau,” Members were sworn to secrecy due to the questionable, illicit nature of the rituals they practiced. Hence it is only now that more information and documentation is coming out. The photos feature the first effigy burned on site, the first “art car,” costumes, and some original statuary. #burningman #cacophonysociety #oto #crowley #artcar #selfiestick #flapper #timewave #quantumhyperspace (thanks to @anericansplendor for these images)

To my joyful surprise, many people took the images seriously. Some of them at first assumed they were real, then got angry when they realized they had been duped. The quality of rushed, distracted attention which characterizes social media browsing makes it the perfect medium for subtle subterfuges and novel forms of misinformation, not to mention gags. I am quite sure a number of confused hipsters believe Burning Man started a century ago, as a result of my post.

In his Editorial, Pavich writes: