In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, it’s easy to find ourselves yearning for the past—even for tools that, by today’s standards, might seem outdated or imperfect. This feeling, often referred to as “technostalgia,” describes a longing for older technologies and the emotional connections we’ve formed with them. It’s not about efficiency or utility but about the charm and creativity they inspired. For me, this has manifested in a surprising way: a deep fondness for MidJourney Version 1 to 3.0, a piece of software not that old but already replaced by its more polished successors.
AI tools like MidJourney and DALL-E are often celebrated for their ability to create highly detailed, photorealistic images. Most users embrace these tools to generate perfection. However, as these tools evolve, I find myself missing the raw, glitchy charm of their earlier versions. The more precise and “perfect” the outputs become, the more they feel sterile—devoid of the unpredictability, errors, and emotional resonance that make art so deeply human.
This brings me to the concept of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection, transience, and incompleteness. The first versions of MidJourney, with their awkward forms and idiosyncratic quirks, evoke this sensibility in a way their latest counterparts cannot. Choosing to work with an older, “flawed” version of AI software becomes a quiet rebellion against the modern obsession with control and technical perfection. After all, are the most technically flawless pieces the most compelling? Or do they lose something vital along the way?
Technostalgia has a peculiar way of influencing creativity. It reminds us of the aesthetic and emotional connections we build with technology as it evolves. MidJourney V1 - 3, with its pixelated and sometimes incoherent outputs, held a uniquely glitchy charm that I’ve found difficult to replicate in its newer versions. These imperfections spoke to me as an artist, offering raw and unexpected material that sparked my imagination.
Recently, I decided to channel this technostalgia into a creative experiment: a music video entirely crafted using MidJourney V3. Generating thousands of prompts, I curated about a hundred images to build the visual narrative. The process was labor-intensive, involving merging, layering, and animating the visuals in Final Cut Pro X. The result was a story that blurs the lines between virtual and physical realities.
The video explores two layers of existence: the glitchy, surreal virtual world of V3, where the protagonist’s consciousness is trapped, and the presumed “real world,” where their physical form resides. To distinguish these layers, I turned to MidJourney V4 for the real-world scenes, using its sharper outputs to contrast the hazy imperfection of V3. This deliberate interplay between the old and new created a fascinating juxtaposition, emphasizing the emotional weight of each plane.
The imperfections of V3 became its greatest strength. These glitches, rather than being flaws, imbued the project with a distinct personality—an artistic fingerprint that could never have emerged from something too polished or precise.
Not everyone was impressed. We were still at the beginning of generative AI, and critics dismissed the video specificl because it was created using AI. But as Karl Marx famously pointed out, the value of goods is tied to the “socially necessary labor time” invested in them. While Marx wasn’t of course discussing art, the time, effort, and skill poured into this video speak to its value. Thousands of prompts, painstaking curation, careful layering, and narrative crafting—this was no push-button project but a labor of love.
This project reminded me of the unexpected ways technology can inspire art. MidJourney V3 may be outdated, but its imperfections fostered a kind of creativity that newer versions couldn’t. By revisiting it, I rediscovered the beauty of working with constraints and imperfections—a lesson that resonates far beyond this one project.
As artists, our tools constantly change, but the connections we form with them, however fleeting, leave lasting imprints on our work. And sometimes, looking back can propel us forward, sparking creativity in the most unexpected places.
