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Spells

13 Spells · four patterns · 41,312 archive images

A Spell is a body of work the machine found in my own record and named, not one I set out to make.

A Spell is a group of my days that turned out to be about the same thing. I don't pick the subject and I don't pick the days. Spells are like stars: they don't appear every day, only when the right things pile up in the right amount.

How a Spell forms

Every day is recordedAt 07:45 each morning the system records the day before: photographs, pages browsed, searches, what was watched, notes, and what the language made of it. That becomes one record.
Days are described by subjectEach day is described by several kinds of evidence, weighted so that a Spell is days that share subject matter, not days that share a schedule. Photographs weigh most, then what the language read, then notes, pages and searches.
Every day is compared with every otherEach pair of days gets a distance from 0 to 1. Two days closer than 0.35 count as neighbours, and three mutual neighbours make a group.
The group has to holdThe same group must still be there five mornings in a row, with at least five days in it each time.
It names itselfThe system picks the name by looking for what this group has that the other groups don't have. That is why the names sound like they came from a machine. They did.
It gets a portrait, a word and a modelEach Spell gets a data portrait, a glyph signature that doubles as a painting recipe, a construct word in the language (TOLLA, NOANA, MITTA...) and its own small image model.
I cullThe one human step: I keep or skip pictures from a scored pool. My picks are the only feedback.
It becomes workA culled Spell gets a catalog page, built with one button: kept images, packed collages, early model frames and a studio brief. Then come the collages, the ad campaign and the paintings.

The Spells room of the Engine Room, the switchboard for the whole system. "A named Spell is also an audience segment: it gets an ad campaign, its Spot, generated from it."

One cycle, five stations: Capture, Language, Produce, Spells, Show. Output becomes input.

The thirteen

four patterns · each with its own image model

A Spell gets its own StyleGAN, trained on the same pictures used to make that Spell, and nothing else. I like these images because they never resolve into anything representational, they stay in that unseen place, always still forming. Some become a starting layer I build a painting on top of. More on the models →

The Unread

Promise Outlives the Hour: frames from its own image model — **Promise Outlives the Hour** · AFTERGLO

Addressed to No One: frames from its own image model — **Addressed to No One** · NOANA

The Wall Keeps Its Drafts: frames from its own image model — **The Wall Keeps Its Drafts** · BUFFA

Diagrams Nobody Read · SKEMA · no image model trained yet

The Substituted Self

The Detachable Face: frames from its own image model — **The Detachable Face** · FACETTA

Screen Where the Face Should Be: frames from its own image model — **Screen Where the Face Should Be** · WOLGA

AI: The Instrumented Face: frames from its own image model — **AI: The Instrumented Face** · MITTA

Governed Passage

Waiting as the Whole of the Job: frames from its own image model — **Waiting as the Whole of the Job** · TOLLA

Discarded Habitation: frames from its own image model — **Discarded Habitation** · MAJJA

Permission to Pass: frames from its own image model — **Permission to Pass** · KULKU

The Machine Re-Stages

AI: The Obedient Silhouette: frames from its own image model — **AI: The Obedient Silhouette** · BLANKO

The Frame Around the Frame: frames from its own image model — **The Frame Around the Frame** · KEHRA

Collages from Spells

packed-field collages · eight designs

Each Spell's kept pictures are packed into collages by a script I directed: rough and crude, heavily fragmented, grids within grids. Eight designs run on the same pool: bright, cut, drawn, field, ledger, packed, plate, register. All collages →

The ad campaigns

each Spell gets a Spot

Every platform is already listening to the rhythm of a day so it can sell it back as an ad. I listen to mine and what comes back is the work. So each named Spell is treated as an audience segment and gets its own campaign, its Spot: posters, banners, a landing page and an eight-second title card, in the Spell's construct word, sold "as is".

Each original poster carries a line from my own data profile in its footer. It is cropped off here.

Campaign collages: the same Spells as printed matter.