AI tools like MidJourney and DALL-E are typically celebrated for their ability to create highly detailed and photorealistic images… and are most often used to precisely do so.
However, as these tools evolve, I can’t help but feel that the images they produce become increasingly sterile and devoid of the 'human' touch—lacking the unpredictability, errors, and personal expression that often imbue art with its soul and character.
Everyone knows about wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that values transience, incompleteness, and imperfection, celebrating the beauty in what's flawed or decayed… By choosing to work with ancient versions of MidJourney and embracing the quirks and idiosyncrasies that come with them, we can indeed make more intriguing and emotionally resonant artworks that somehow invoke a certain wabi-sabi feeling.
Choosing an older, 'flawed' version of an AI software is a statement against the boring unimaginative modern obsession with control and perfection. Are the most technically perfect pieces the most aesthetically or emotionally compelling?
Let’s be the Little Prince and ask MidJourney: “If you please… draw me a sheep!”
I mean a savvy Little Prince: “/imagine a space sheep grazing on another planet”
Look at v2 and v6, and tell me if v6 isn’t plain boring BS!
Long live v2!
