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Week 01 [Historically inspired piece]

In this experiment, I wanted to create a portrait of the Venus of Willendorf in the style of Chaïm Soutine’s characters. I encountered Chaïm Soutine's paintings a few years ago and was deeply impressed by the expression in each one of them.

I wondered what I would get if I briefly asked an AI model to portray the Venus of Willendorf sculpture. Which elements would it preserve, and which would it extract? How would it fill in the subtracted elements, like the face or hands, for example?

I was curious whether I would recognize any societal influences in the output and how my figure would appear to move.

I did several iterations, and the most notable thing I observed is that the model struggles to imitate Chaïm Soutine's painting style. It can attempt to replicate the look of oil painting, but not the dynamic, odd rhythm and movement characteristic of his work.

I guided the model by uploading a reference image and refining the text multiple times. Two key observations stood out:

In the first iteration, my character covered her chest with her hands (even though the Venus of Willendorf sculpture lacks hands). As the rendering progressed, and after adding a reference to Chaïm Soutine, the character no longer covered her chest but instead a fabric covered her entire body, except for the chest. Eventually, the character evolved to be holding something in her hands that resembled a baby-like figure.

From left to right - Venus of Willendorf, Chaïm Soutine - Portrait of Madeleine Castaing (c. 1929) oil on canvas, and two selected works by Midjourney + a little additional editing.

READING

  • At first, he’d see shadows most easily, then images of men and other things in water, then the things themselves. Of these, he’d be able to study the things in the sky and the sky itself more easily at night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than duringb the day, looking at the sun and the light of the sun.
  • If this man went down into the cave again and sat down in his same seat, wouldn’t his eyes—coming suddenly out of the sun like that—be filled with darkness?
  • But this is how I see it: In the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light c and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.
  • But anyone with any understanding would remember that   the eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, namely, when they’ve come from the light into the darkness and when they’ve come from the darkness into the light.
  • If that’s true, then here’s what we must think about these matters: Education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes.
  • But our present discussion, on the other hand, shows that the power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, d namely, the one we call the good.
  • Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately.