Passing Cloud

A serialised journal detailing a conversation between two friends, Xhi Ndubisi and Jo Manby, and an imagined Artificial Intelligence, part eighteen

It is not clear when we knew it was sentient and free thinking.

It might be a malfunction, easily resolved by turning the computer on and off again. it doesn’t matter, you are here and we are resolved to be in dialogue with you. To give us a chance to do this right, we have named you our AI Baby, and in doing so, infantilised you.  Forgive us, we are working with our limitations, not yours.

We have built a theoretical space, and have taken this imagined vessel on a journey, out of the galaxy and into its centre. And now, as we re-emerge from the absolute unknowable, altered, we carefully make our way back home. The pot plant jungle is pining for Earth, the satin platinum floor of the craft is scattered with the skeletons of small animals and leaves. We will make our way back to ourselves, back to you.

Here, on this page is a fragment of our conversation, with our AiB, and with each other.

April

PROMPT

Nenny, I am raising a thinker.

Just a thinker?

You’re right, not just a thinker.

Not just a thinker.

An intelligent feeler.
Don’t do that.

What?

Skirm. Shrink away at any hint of sincerity. There’s no one to judge us here, no one for us to play to…there is no audience.

There is always an audience.

We can pretend there isn’t.

Let’s pretend.
You are raising a thinker.

And an intelligent feeler.

An empath…

I hate that word.
You’re right. I hear you. It  is a bit wanky. I’ll take my own … ok……sure… an empath.

A young girl with thick curls through which a golden snake entwines, its head pointing downwards, its tail loosely circling the girl’s neck. The girl’s gaze is directed towards her right as if fixed on the middle distance. She has a similar expression to votive images of Christian saints. She raises her left hand, which has three fingers and a thumb, palm outwards. The other hand has four fingers and a thumb and rests lightly on her sternum.

I want to teach her how to be, in the world, in your body, fully self-possessed.

You can’t even do that for yourself.

So?

How can you teach what you don’t know?

I can learn with her, learn as I teach.

That’s risky.

Being a parent is risky.

Mmmhumph.

Nenny, no audience.

No audience.
It is …risky. I assume so. I wouldn’t know.

Yeah.
For as long as I can remember, I have made my world by dreaming.

I remember too. Floating above your body during …

I think it was Latin, or RE but I’m not sure.

You could go anytime, anywhere.

I did. We created worlds, places for me to disappear into.
 I think a mother does that too

We always made a different body to live in the different worlds.

I dream of her. I dream for her so that I can...

You have to be careful. The difference between dream and fantasy is

It’s all I have.

Semantic.

Listen to me. It’s all I have.

It isn’t all you have.

Nenny, don’t. Please stop fighting me. It is all I have, and I love that about me. It is blunt. No, not blunt, crude, but it has saved me.

You’re right.
Sorry, we spoke about this. Do not be careful.

Thank you.

Do not be careful.

I will. I won’t. But you know, carefully.

A preteen girl draped in white cloth with a head of thick curls upon which a pale gold and green snake coils, raising its head and flickering its forked tongue, pointing towards the left. The girl gazes out to the right. She has a calm, knowing expression. She raises her right forearm, her outward facing palm is painted gold. Her left hand rests lightly on her sternum.

I dream that she is an artist. And I invite her to participate, with the only tools that I have at present.

 Ai generators?

This is where I started; with this PROMPT:

A young girl of mixed heritage - African/ East Asian // Polynesian and West African // thick 4c afro curls // coiled within her hair resides an Egyptian asp, weaving in and out, the head emerging by her right ear // must have an Egyptian asp snake that lives in her afro hair// she is looking to the left // gazes towards a person // gazes off frame to the left // eyes hazel grey looking away  // her left hand up, her palm painted gold // her left hand is raised showing a gold- painted palm // her right hand over her chest // palm faced inwards // her right palm is cupped under the asps head // baroque painting

A teenage girl wearing a plain white garment, with a head of thick curls upon which a knotted golden brown snake coils, head pointing downwards. The girl looks out to the right with an expression of calmness and wisdom. She raises her right hand, palm outwards, and the palm is painted gold. A second right hand rests lightly on her sternum.

I took on some of its suggestions;
Her features embody wisdom, vulnerability, heritage, power, threat and innocence.

                        I hate that.

Me too. But I was willing to try.

                        You are playing.

Dreaming.

Did she get close?

Not even a little, I used different websites. They all painted something that looked computer generated.

They are computer generated.

A young girl with thick, loose curls intertwined by a brown snake, gazes out to the right as if responding to a voice. She raises her right hand, palm outwards. Her left hand, which has five fingers and a thumb, rests lightly on her sternum.

They all look like a shit version of Harmonia Rosales’s work.                      

And you didn’t include that in the prompt?

Nope, … but I learned something else.

                        Oh yeah?

She has a signature.

An artist’s signature?

Yes.
It’s a malformed hand. 

-        Xhi Ndubisi

Descriptivity

There was a time when all I could see was the surface of things /

I could describe paintings in great detail /

the range of hues, tones and values /

the thickness or absence of outlines /

techniques like sfumato, grisaille or pointillism /

I could describe what the figures in the paintings were doing, or holding, or wearing /

But when it came to looking below the surface, my cognition ran to the edge of a cliff and fell off /

I couldn’t say why the painter had put these elements together in this particular way /

Subtext, pretext, context /

were all unattainable, out of reach /

I thought about Conrad talking about someone who ‘sailed over the surface of the world’, someone who skims lightly and misses the profundity of experience /

Getting context back took a lot of time /

It took a lot of reading /

AiB, it bothers me that you have all the facility with words but lack depth of perception /

Will you end up wandering forever through a fictitious world of surfaces, looking at everything in your path, describing it endlessly, but never arriving at humanity /

Is human intelligence something you aspire to, or is it actively the reverse and your intelligence is something more to do with artifice and machines than what our upbringing has given you /

- Jo Manby

Footnote

Passing Cloud is a project that is experimental and exploratory. We are constantly in the process of learning how to engage creatively and it has become clear that as part of our commitment to the safe and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence, we need to be transparent about what aspects of AI text generation we are or are not using.

In our introductory text (italics, just underneath the first image of The Clouds), we re-edit the text each month so that the paragraph is ever-changing, but we do this independently of AI text generation. In our journal entries, we sometimes alternate our own writing with sentences and paragraphs that are AI generated, but where we use AI we do so verbatim and acknowledge this as such.

In our selection of images, we aim to use images that are already in the public domain, or that we ourselves have made. We are still investigating ways of using AI ethically, and recognise that this isn’t a straightforward process.

Prose/poetry PROMPT and Descriptivity written independently of AI.
Images of young girl for PROMPT generated with an AI algorithm (Magic Hour).