Thinking About AI

 1. An online friend says AI images strike them as "creepy". I see what they mean...

But I  prefer "uncanny".

"Uncanny" is what I'm aiming for

Uncanny in the sense of disturbing because unfamiliar-

Not quite of this world. 

 Dreamlike, visionary, peculiar....

I don't want photorealism- though something very like it is on offer.

 2. I write a prompt.

 And it's a bit like throwing the yarrow stalks, or laying out a Tarot spread, or swirling the tea leaves in the cup. 

 Divinatory.

I never know what I'm going to get.

Sometimes I get "Fuck off". Sometimes I get a nudge and a "Please define your terms a little more precisely".

Sometimes I get a shock to the system.- and "This isn't what you wanted, is it? But don't turn away because it's exactly what you need."

3. I do believe it can be called art.

But it's art without an artist.

Or perhaps it's art with a million artists.

I don't know exactly how much credit to claim for myself.

But I do know that if I'm simply mucking about the images I get are banal- and only if I'm fully engaged- and giving of myself- do I get anything worthwhile...

Isha

 People in Scotland have been told to stay away from windows because they may blow in and move beds away from tall chimneys because they may blow over and come in through the roof.

This is ahead of the arrival of storm Isha.

Down here on the South Coast it's gusty and the pigeons are flitting about as if unsettled. We aren't likely to cop for it the way Scotland will but the authorities have nevertheless issued us with an amber warning. At the time of writing (half past nine in the morning) the sun is shining and the sky is all but cloudless...

Titania

 I was thinking of the Ballad of Tam Lin and not A Midsummer Night's Dream when I wrote the prompt for this but the lady insists that she is called Titania....

A Tower Struck By Lightning

 

A version of the Tarot Card called The Tower

Ghost Girl Rider

 We lived in a valley and the upper slopes of the hills were still forested. Up in the woods where I sometimes played with my friends there was a steep gravelly slope down which, said one of my friends, a crazy horsewoman had once ridden at full gallop and suffered a horrible accident. If you search among the stones, he added, you can still find traces of her blood. 

"And they do say her ghost still rides..."

I think he was spinning me a line but if she ever existed hotpot reckons she'd have looked something like this.