After thinking through our visual poem idea more for this synthetic media project, we decided to go with a more analog, tangible approach. We wanted to print out the photos DALL.E generated and display them in a way that has a sense of playfulness and sentimentality in contrast to the digital-ness of synthetic media.

We took 2 variations of each of the 4 images DALL.E generated when given the poem as a prompt, so with 8 images per mobile and 3 mobiles, we had a total of 24 images. The prints were to be done in riso, and even with only 24 images it became a bit labor intensive because we chose to print it in 3 colors, and due to the manual process of riso each image had to be printed 3 times.

The riso images came out well, and it gave an even more abstract, creative look to the DALL.E generated images. We had 2 separate printing sessions just because the 1st one was a bit disastrous as the printer would jam if the colors were too opaque, and we also had a lot of misprints and misalignment issues. Lan helpfully put large numbers at the bottom of the pages for the 2nd printing session to help us make sure we were aligning it correctly while printing.

A print with 2 colors.

Cutting out each of the DALL.E pieces to fold, and string onto the mobile.

Hank volunteering his precious time to help our project.

We came up with the idea of displaying it in a hanging mobile, similar to those found hanging above baby cribs. The concept of our project became rather than the creators, we were like the gallery curators exhibiting the collaborative works of DALL.E and the generated poets from Verse by Verse.

Finished product

To make the idea of exhibiting an artwork more complete, we printed out a placard with details of the piece with a price as well as a QR code that leads to a site with all the 3 poems that generated the 3 sets of images: https://iguannalin.github.io/reveries/

Overall, the project was fun because tangibility of playing with paper, strings, and wood felt like an arts and crafts project when I was a kid. However, I’m not sure I’m convinced this is a good use of synthetic media or if our project reflects any future usage of synthetic media like DALL.E. I remain pessimistic about the use of technology like this, though not in a futile way. I think regardless of how people feel about it, it’s going to happen one way or another, so we can only keep trying to explore different ways we can relate to the emerging technology.