Diffusion Models are a digital technology allowing for graphic output, triggered by (human) prompting of the tech, with a well-groomed (human-written) textual phrasing. This here is a verbal play on these models, back to human-struggled and confused text. It’s all hand made. If you are an engineer or scientist you might find it irritating or infantile. Yes, it is human play. Hence you are most invited reading it.
Please read with as much “wink” you wish to add, to make it digestible. [ diffused translation: imagine a solid, colorful Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride wink-diffusion slider on a meaning-making mix console]
as for the above visual: resist being mesmerized. (A diffused paraphrasing from an utterance by an actual human academic)
Welcome to the real of Referencing Technology (RefTech). [diffused translation: welcome to the extremely large models with billions of features and a referenced database, as part of a pattern recognizing technology]. There is meaning here, you do think to recognize something. Your brain is obsessively trying to place it.
We trust the referencing automated by the RefTech to output a nonreferencable. In the nonreferencable we trust. [ diffused translation: imagine a visualization of an unreachable heavenly ivory tower, domesticated by a wizard behind a curtain telling you: “it’s all your creativity, kid!”]
Some might imagine that for thousands of years we have been preparing for our RefTech by creating narratives and spin-off institutions of that what should not be named (ie not referenced) and by diluting that what could have been named (ie observed, tested, deduced, inferred or otherwise transparently thought-exercised) with gradual, unveiling, and yes, humanly failing effort. [diffused translation: envision a visual of an organic, mysterious yet liberating RefTech as the 3D rendered misinformed cherry on a simulated cake, presented to celebrate humanity’s greatest achievement: your tweaking and prompting into the world]
The recipe is simple: forget roots and assign metaphysical magic to that what is no longer known, not yet known, or made to be kept unknown. [diffused translation: the unknown known of a photorealistic word to pixel, birthed by your hyperrealistic yet de-textured mind to smoothened hand].
What better augmentation to this non-linear development by creating not only that what should not be referenced and also cannot be referenced —by giving users a virtual slider or two to fiddle with— and out comes an uncanny close-enough.
In a desert of the real can grow a beckoning flower that sirens ownership. Is this desert from, of or via Boudrillard?
Were his words diffused, resynthesized and co-opted by the first film in the Matrix series & then later taken by Žižek for a book title or did the imperial uber-randomness strike twice?
Or trice: Boudrillard himself might have reformatted the idea of the desert from other authors who described “real virtuality,” hyperreality, “death of the real” or deserts as ideal places for forty days long visions of real proportions.
These (non)references could understandably be upsetting to some reader (eg if the ontology of one’s measurable and almost-tangible deductive logic becomes endangered or upset), or too hyped by yet others who “enjoy” the less measurable. [diffused translation: false dichotomies are such easy and low hanging fruits].
RefTech as a “wished for” technology to allow more anthropomorphization. This offered by tactile interaction, into the idealized & utopian “geniusness” of creative output easily diffusible by the click of a “button.” Buttons and diffusions allowing it and oneself to become as-if-one’s-own. The “beauty” of the paradox does not go unnoticed realizing the single spacetimed button leading to (entropic) diffusion; thermodynamically atomic.
This process is fashioned all the while we are allowed to mechanize, simplify or deny the human, and the humane of the creative relationships, weavable within the real of you and me, ever slightly touching indexes. (Yes, in metaphorical counterpoint, some might now be reminded of Bob Dylan and his diffusions of man across the fields upon which winds howl. No, no one would think of a chapel here. The latter is the elephant asked not to think about and this so not to slide toward yielding it with historic and spiritual meaning).
Granted, with the RefTech we are offering and answering unknown-needs in a metaworld of unknown-urgency: the (lesser/greater) geniuses among us do gain access to tools for diffused referencing, while the mean of the common among us gain and repurpose play and distractors
RefTech doesn’t enable the creator and “prompt engineer”to reference all the referenced works used to create “real” & more-than-human output, as much as any word written here was once in a past referencable to its ancient Creators, yet now diluted and lost in the diffusions of human-mounted noise.
Welcome to the real unreal engines where history is ravaged; welcome to the pixel of a word spread out as a dust spec(k) of ridiculed substance into an unlabeled future.
references.
Sohl-Dickstein, J. (2015). “Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.03585.pdf
ImageGen by Google: https://imagen.research.google
Dall-E2 by OpenAI: https://openai.com/dall-e-2/
Huggingface: https://huggingface.co/blog/ and: https://huggingface.co/blog/stable_diffusion
crAIyon:https://www.craiyon.com/
StabilityAI： https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/home
midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/home/
Automated prompt generation: https://typestitch.com
no I did not add all authors whom I diffused across and in between the above words.
—-•
questions:
• What could ‘RefTech’ be imagined to be(come)?
• What could “referencing humans” (be imagined to) mean to you?
source: (wink)