AI-hab: All My Means Are Sane, My Motive and My Object Mad
April 24, 2023 3:06 PM Subscribe
A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? from Chaos Bewitched: Moby-Dick and AI by Eigil zu Tage-Ravn
Zoellner wrote that of all the works of literature he had encountered, only Moby-Dick actually frightened him. So much so, in fact, that he called his critical efforts “sheer self-defense”.
I hear this. I first read the novel in a college class on madness, meaninglessness, and deviant sexuality (oh yes). The prof told us he tried to write an MA thesis on the book and it drove him into a year of intensive psychotherapy.
Ho ho, I said to junior myself, now I have to write on Moby-Dick. And I tried. A page or two would appear, then the novel offered counterexamples to each idea I offered. I offered modified and new ideas, and the bastard... pushed back at me. Several mornings around 4 am I threw up my hands and tried to sleep on it. A week later I gave up.
None of this stopped me from teaching it in college classes. And offering the same warning to students! :)
posted by doctornemo at 4:25 PM on April 24, 2023 [9 favorites]
I hear this. I first read the novel in a college class on madness, meaninglessness, and deviant sexuality (oh yes). The prof told us he tried to write an MA thesis on the book and it drove him into a year of intensive psychotherapy.
Ho ho, I said to junior myself, now I have to write on Moby-Dick. And I tried. A page or two would appear, then the novel offered counterexamples to each idea I offered. I offered modified and new ideas, and the bastard... pushed back at me. Several mornings around 4 am I threw up my hands and tried to sleep on it. A week later I gave up.
None of this stopped me from teaching it in college classes. And offering the same warning to students! :)
posted by doctornemo at 4:25 PM on April 24, 2023 [9 favorites]
Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!
posted by Gerald Bostock at 7:32 PM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 7:32 PM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
posted by librosegretti at 8:42 PM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by librosegretti at 8:42 PM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
The thing about Moby Dick is that it's all quotable. The great feat is that Melville sustained such prose for so long.
posted by vacapinta at 12:41 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:—through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.As for the linked article, the first part is interesting. The part where he coaxes some AI to produce a dark seascape is the least interesting part of it.
--Chapter 114. The Gilder.
posted by vacapinta at 12:41 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
That is twice in two days I have seen “squitchy”
posted by BlunderingArtist at 4:59 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BlunderingArtist at 4:59 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yeah, "frightened" is right. Even the early pages of the book just squirm around on you. I've never succeeded in reading it for the same reason I've never succeeded in getting into Zappa: I recognize they're works of genius, but they make me feel queasy.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:27 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:27 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
That said, IDK, clearly I'm missing the point as a non-fan of Moby Dick, but I thought the AI part of the essay was delightful, and utterly not what I expected going in.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:28 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:28 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
yeah it's well played, I genuinely lol'd
posted by Gerald Bostock at 9:10 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 9:10 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
The part where he coaxes some AI to produce a dark seascape is the least interesting part of it.
Maybe, I thought it was interesting that after learning the painting was "nautical" and "19th century" the AI immediately drew the kind of ship that would lead to the description "three blue, dim, perpendicular lines."
In other words, after looking at a bunch of 19th century nautical paintings this thing immediately knows that the 19th century ships have three masts and those masts look like three crosses. Which then makes it clear to the person interpreting the AI output that the three perpendicular lines Melville describes are probably the masts of a 19th century ship.
To bring this around to the subject of the essay, someone reading Moby Dick in the 19th century might have immediately guessed it was a painting of a ship on the ocean, because they would have been familiar with what those ships looked like. While we, without knowing anything about 19th century ships but having access to the generative AI, can stumble our way into the same understanding.
posted by subdee at 11:47 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Maybe, I thought it was interesting that after learning the painting was "nautical" and "19th century" the AI immediately drew the kind of ship that would lead to the description "three blue, dim, perpendicular lines."
In other words, after looking at a bunch of 19th century nautical paintings this thing immediately knows that the 19th century ships have three masts and those masts look like three crosses. Which then makes it clear to the person interpreting the AI output that the three perpendicular lines Melville describes are probably the masts of a 19th century ship.
To bring this around to the subject of the essay, someone reading Moby Dick in the 19th century might have immediately guessed it was a painting of a ship on the ocean, because they would have been familiar with what those ships looked like. While we, without knowing anything about 19th century ships but having access to the generative AI, can stumble our way into the same understanding.
posted by subdee at 11:47 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just recently read an annotated copy of Moby Dick for no other reason than to say I've read the book and to enjoy it in a manner I know I wouldn't enjoy it if I were doing it for a class. It's definitely a strange novel to say the least with a lot of very descriptive text mixed in with a lot of philosophy. Good in small doses, a mess if you're trying to cram reading a few hundred pages a night for a deadline or assignment.
The article in this post is fun as you can almost feel the narrator taking a similar journey as Ismael over the course of the novel. His pursuit of a representative painting from the selected passage causing him to slowly lose a little of his sanity in the process. Or maybe it's more like Ahab in pursuit of the whale and completely losing his sanity.
Still, in the end, nothing the "AI" generated came close to what I imagined the picture looking like. Mostly misses the whole "giant fish himself" and even the chaos element in the description" If I was an art instructor and a student turned in any of these images based on the text, I can't imagine giving them a good grade for the effort.
posted by inthe80s at 12:49 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
The article in this post is fun as you can almost feel the narrator taking a similar journey as Ismael over the course of the novel. His pursuit of a representative painting from the selected passage causing him to slowly lose a little of his sanity in the process. Or maybe it's more like Ahab in pursuit of the whale and completely losing his sanity.
Still, in the end, nothing the "AI" generated came close to what I imagined the picture looking like. Mostly misses the whole "giant fish himself" and even the chaos element in the description" If I was an art instructor and a student turned in any of these images based on the text, I can't imagine giving them a good grade for the effort.
posted by inthe80s at 12:49 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Good in small doses, a mess if you're trying to cram reading a few hundred pages a night for a deadline or assignment.
I'm currently doing a re-read and I've decided to try something I've never done with previous novels: reading it in nightly installments—precisely one chapter per sitting. It's allowed me to really live with the book in a way I've never really experienced before and I'm loving it. And the sheer variety keeps things lively. Some nights it's a mere digestif before bedtime; some nights, an entire buffet.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:18 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm currently doing a re-read and I've decided to try something I've never done with previous novels: reading it in nightly installments—precisely one chapter per sitting. It's allowed me to really live with the book in a way I've never really experienced before and I'm loving it. And the sheer variety keeps things lively. Some nights it's a mere digestif before bedtime; some nights, an entire buffet.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:18 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
doctornemo, did the prof happen to be Mick Taussig?!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:18 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:18 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I liked his Melville-ian comments on the AI pix, lol.
And I have to recommend Frank Muller's magisterial audiobook of Moby D.
posted by storybored at 9:06 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
And I have to recommend Frank Muller's magisterial audiobook of Moby D.
posted by storybored at 9:06 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
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