“Neither one of the two friends felt any great need of talking. As yet. They had time; summer lay before them, long and full of promises.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominsummer Madness (1955)
The summer solstice has arrived, on what is, where I am, a rather grey and clammy day. This morning, around four, I looked out the window, not long before a gentle rain began to fall onto the pavement below. To the east, the clouds were just frayed enough to let a little of what my mother calls the “dawnzerly light” through.
I went back to sleep with the patter of rain on my roof.
Not feeling terribly sunny this morning, I posted a thread of moody sunsets—a reminder of the lengthening nights ahead as we settle into the latter half of the year.
What does DALL·E mini know of the solstice, I wondered? On a whim, I typed the simple prompt, summer solstice into the app.
Reader, it is what it says on the tin.
The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), which is precisely what DALL·E mini hath rendered.
Crowds gather, facing the dawn. Some appear robed (are they wielding torches?), and it’s not clear whether we’re watching a sunrise, or a ritual burning.
The viewer stands on the fringes, apart from the crowd. Beyond, the sun casts a white-hot blast radius across the open landscape. When DALL·E mini fails to recognize the sun as a shape, it substitutes the orb for a lick of flame. These images are decidedly optical: above one sun, a lens flare kicks across the sky.
DALL·E mini’s work here is reminiscent of Olafur Eliasson’s 2003 installation at the Tate Modern.
When the artist was invited to create something for the gallery’s vast Turbine Hall (lucky!), he said, “At first I wanted to do a little display replicating all different kinds of weather. But I kept stripping away from this idea until all I had left was the idea of creating a sun.”
So, the artist and his team did just that; adding a little fog for good measure.
Visitors seized on Eliasson’s creation; stretching out on the cold, concrete floor in awe.
At one point, the BBC sent a meteorologist to the Tate, where he delivered weather reports from the gallery. Eliasson said, “He’d do the forecast with my sun behind it and then at the end say: ‘And here at the Tate the sun is still shining.’ Within a week, millions of people had seen the work on TV.”
Later, Eliasson’s chief designer, Sebastian Behmann, remarked, “When you install something like this, you don’t think about big crowds being there – or at least we didn’t back then. But the people being there is what made it work so well.”
Each of DALL·E mini’s solstices features people; suggesting that it, too, understands the role we play in activating an event like the solstice.
Who are you gathering with today?
🔥
DALLEance is a newsletter by Anna Soper. Find more of Anna’s work on Twitter (@Flora150Project), or on her website.
Hello this is my first exposure to DALL-E or any AI art! Wonderful stuff...Im born on the Summer Solstice and have to wonder if winter solstice would give a diff result or the equinox's? (pleez excuse any incorrect purifications, some things I can never keep straight on the fly of my thoughts) since all four are related but the diff being the LONGEST day for the summer solstice, just showing the sun itself might not be so on point...anyway loving it all...BTW I would use it as an excuse to have beach parties in my youth.
of course I question the original use of the Latin term Solstice in the first place since sun/sol "STOP" might have been better with a modifier to indicate the Longest day end of the relationship between the Four astronomical events...the "STILL" portion of the term might have better described the equinox's. but Equal say it all for those two.
Also my first exposure to Olafur Eliasson’s as a ref, I need to look him up (my assumption that "Olafur" is "Oliver" was correct, my language skills are improving...Woo, having STEPHEN as a name has forced me to learn that the F and V sounds and spellings are all interlinked, hence the Purification exception rule beyond just adding S's Half/Halves...Self/Selves)
Sorry if I posted/commented too many Abstracts, in the future I will be more on point to the Art...I hope.
OMG for being an electronic engineer and knowing how the chips talking one bit at a time in Machine Code, millions of pre-determined yes/no questions, all through transistors in one way flow facilitated by geranium giving off electrons into wires in circles within circles in a spiral array making logic gates using Boolean logic of AND's/OR's and NOT's all adding up to this miracle talking box we carry in our pockets but Social Media just evades me...I'm having trouble logging in and Posting this... :(
Thank You Anna for your work/post's :)