A stable road to empathy
Your weekly dose of fresh poetry #120
Stable
diffusion, or
should I use DALL-E 2?
I look at my credits. I will
try both.
I wrote this poem earlier this week and put it up on Twitter. It ties in with a couple of conversations I had this week, about topics I care about, so I wanted to share it here as well.
More than one meaning
Let's start by how this poem came into the world. My poet friend Alex Price posts a daily prompt on Twitter to write a cinquain. He provides a word and shares how he has used it for a cinquain. Sometimes I participate. Especially when I see a word that is open to multiple interpretations. The word for this prompt was stable. A beautiful word, because it has more than one meaning. Stable can mean unchanging, but it can also mean the place where livestock sleeps. For me, it ignited a different thought: it made me think of the AI art generation algorithm Stable Diffusion. So, I came up with this poem.
More empathy
This is precisely what I hope to achieve with my poetry: showing a different, hopefully unexpected, way of seeing the world. Not to convince others this is The Only Way, but to show there are different ways of looking at and perceiving things. We all bring our own history, culture, education, and upbringing to the game. We all perceive and interpret things with our own twist. And that is beautiful and important. By showing what I see, I hope that you compare that to what you see, and notice that both views are valid. In this way, poetry, and other art, can contribute to more acceptance of the viewpoint of The Other, and thus to more empathy. And I think we need that.
Generated with AI
Now, another conversation I contributed to was about AI art. Let's not go into the discussion of whether art created with AI is actually art at all. I believe it is. I believe that the AI algorithms, such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2, are great new tools. I've been playing with it, and I've seen what others can do with it. I know that making something cool is not that easy. People who can do that, are artists who have mastered using this new tool. Or are in the process of it. Also, the way AI works, is that it generates a new image based on your input. It does not copy or present images that have been made by someone else before. It's not a copy machine.
However, there is a bit of a challenge. To let this AI do what it does, it has to be trained. For that, an enormous set of picture-description pairs is used. Almost 6 billion of these pairs. They are gathered by bots from the internet. That means, that not all the original artists have been able to give permission for their images to be used. It is a bit the challenge of the internet as it was until recently. There is no way to share your work online and protect it from unwanted use. Web3, the version of the internet that is deeply rooted in blockchains, gives more possibilities to do that. That is why I like it. Because, and this is why I'm telling you all this, this is what I think is important: art has value. If you enjoy art or use art, please think of the artists, and find a way to compensate them. Art has value. Poetry is art. Poetry has value.
#paythepoet
So what does that mean? Well, first of all: I am delighted that you are here. And I love you for it. Thank you. There is nothing that will change about that. If you're here, reading this, that matters first of all
But I want to do more with my art, and I want to support other poets. Help them thrive. That means that I want to generate an income from this endeavor. And you can help me with that. I will soon open up paid subscriptions. If you get one, you will not get more content here. I will send you a pdf poetry collection, a bespoke poem and an NFT if you want that. On top, I will invite you to a monthly discussion here, where we talk about poets and which one will get the opportunity to share a poem in this newsletter. And get paid for it.
Or you can buy me coffee, buy my collection or collect my poems as digital collectables. Or share this newsletter with your friends. You will be a true Maecenas, not just supporting me, but helping me to support other poets.
What do you think? Are you in?
Poetics in life
In these times to be jolly, and of finding things to do with the kids now they’re not in school, try to get some cooking done. Our kids like Buddy Oliver, who shows how to cook when you’re a kid. This video is a delight, but there are many more. Our favourite is the crispy chicken.
You just put one school bag here, and another over there, and that is your goal. Now the World Cup draws to an end, it’s likely that many kids around the world will play a bit of extra football, or soccer if you wish. And to do so, you don’t need much. A pile of jackets, schoolbags. That’s all you need to start playing, and it is what happens literally all over the world.
There’s a lot going on in the world. Now, and always. Not all of that is good. Imagine being a woman in Iran at the moment, for example.
As you know, I am exploring web3 - the internet powered by blockchain. One of the things I like about that, is how the people in it can be extremely humane and kind. There’s a lot of focus on supporting Ukranian artists right now, and also Iranian women. Looking at the art some of them create, is mind-boggling. Sometimes you simply see familiar things, of which you know they come from a completely different situation. And sometimes you see art that has a beauty you can’t comprehend that it comes from a war(-like) situation. Khosravi Pantea creates such art. She recently created a piece inspired by music from the motion picture Amélie. For me, this movie is set in front of the steps leading up to the Sacré Coeur in Paris. That’s the image I have. Now, look at the picture below, and play the song. Enjoy. Oh, and if you can: add this piece to your collection.
The FIFA World Cup is almost over. Look back in with this collection of poems:
Poetry elsewhere
So, as you have read above, you can create images with AI. But you can also create texts with AI. A new tool has just been released, and it some artists are already experimenting with it. Like my poet friend Punit. This poem is a brilliant experiment, read GPTSENSE by Punit Thakkar
Like the subway cars running by, this poem switches from looking inside and looking outside. Loving it, and loving the setting. Makes me want to go to Singapore again. Read on the way to chinese garden MRT station by Winnie on Poetry Trapper Keeper:
Another way to use AI with poetry, which I also like to do, is to illustrate a poem with AI images. The poet OddWritings feeds the lines of his poems to the AI and then uses these to illustrate his poem. The results are rather lovely clips. Like this video poem Secrets.
I am such a luddite! I had no clue about any of this other poetry stuff going on. I'll do some investigating. I mean—I still handwrite some poems with ink on paper!
Thanks a lot for the shoutout! Hope your readers like the poems 😀