Corpses on the Vine

An Exercise in AI Assisted Surrealist Writing

I was playing around with CLIP Interrogator, an AI that “reads” a picture and spits out keyword descriptions. It gave me an idea to write short, surreal pieces using the words and phrases from the output. The results of this experiment are below. I decided to call this “Corpses on the Vine,” after the surrealist game, “Exquisite Corpse.”

Output #1

Tired and haunted, the android eyes fell on me. Their developers had failed to sufficiently develop them. On the TV, Miami Vice cut to a close up of a man with a beard. He stood in front of a colorfully ominous background.

I sat in the brightly lit purple room, the bar behind me. A dead body with Latino features lay cut open on it. A creative coder with his computer sits next to it, using its limp legs as an arm rest. The painting I was working on, inspired by Arturo Rivera, would not come together the way I wanted. The character portrait had collapsed into a landscape.

I picked up my phone. I took a bad selfie. It would go on to become the number one trending photo of 2019.

Output #2

Even in this gray monochrome world, I still bleed the color red. The gargoyles fly from the church and head south for the winter. I knock on the tomb, but get no answer. Angry and helpless, I head to the theater. The curtains are red. The banner is, too. The play is inspired by Albert Joseph Pénot’s painting Départ pour le Sabbat. The starring role is played by a ventriloquist dummy. The audience is silent as bones lying on the ground and give no applause. Critics call it empty artwork. I step into the daylight. The world seems as if it was made in RPG maker. The polycount is low. I look behind me to realize I am a man on a book cover, walking through a tunnel.

Output #3

I checked the time on tall building with a clock on the front of it, but it still read 2:27 even after three hours.

I got tired of waiting and walked into the matte painting.

I emerged in the midst of a still photo inspired by Thomas Struth.

Trapped in the maze of being featured on Unsplash, I wandered through the concrete and glass landscape.

Deprived of interesting sights and sounds, I contemplated the debate of regionalism vs. globalism.

To escape the 360 degree heat, I dove into the ocean of an equirectangular projection map.

I evaporated with the water and rained down on to the modern Chicago streets, piece by piece.

I entered a nearby bookshop and bought an issue of National Geographic dedicated to the structure of the teeth of a now extinct reptile.

As I waited for a bus on a bench, a young woman explained the technique of anamorphic widescreen in fascinating detail.

On the bus, halfway to my destination, I realized my soul was gone. The young woman had captured it with her Sony A3 camera.

If you enjoyed these, please consider picking up my books at Amazon, Bookshop, or Godless.