Scanlyze

Windows on Other Worlds

WINDOWS ON OTHER WORLDS

RECEPTION
TUESDAY, APRIL 4
SCATV STUDIOS
90 UNION SQUARE
6-8 PM

EXHIBIT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
TUE-SAT 12 NOON-8PM
APRIL 4-APRIL 29 2023

The artist, Henry Edward Hardy, has been a Somerville resident for 15 years. Henry first started doing AI generative art under a scholarship from Artisan’s Aslylum several years ago.

Henry is the host of “Somerville Freeform” on Boston Free Radio, every Thursday at 2pm US Eastern Time. Henry has put together a 16-part retrospective of his father, the Rev. George H. Hardy, called, “Dad Remembers,” to be aired in the future on SCATV, so don’t miss that!

Since August 2022, Henry has been working with the generative art program Midjourney. Midjourney uses text input and sophisticated image enhancement techniques to create visionary images.

The role of the artist on midjourney is to generate the initial input text, refine the image through usually in Henry’s case, 80-100 revisions, select an image for printing, and print it. Henry has made more than 20,000 images on midjourney since August, 2022. These are some illustrations he likes and wants to share.

Henry’s images in the show represent windows onto other worlds. Most are inspired by his unpublished stories and role-playing world of an alternate Mars in 2034, called, “Lobopods of Mars.”

Henry’s illustrations are inspired by Woodstock, Tolkien, Leonardo da Vinci, The Elric books of Michael Moorcock, Alice in Wonderland, Hieronymus Bosch, and Art Noveau.

Preproduction and editing is done with Photoshop and GIMP. The displayed images in the show are Giclee printed on archival quality Hahnemühle William Turner paper using a Canon P-200 pigment printer, and mounted on 3/16 inch black Gatorboard.

You can contact Henry at hhardy01@gmail.com or on Mastodon at @hhardy01@mastodon.social for more information.

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Artist’s Statement

Henry Edward Hardy
“Windows on Other Worlds”

April 4-April 29, 2023
Tue-Sat 12 noon-8pm
SCATV Studios
90 Union Square, Somerville, MA, USA

Reception open to the public
April 4, 6-8 pm

These illustrations are among more than 20,000 images I have made using the midjourney AI art program.

The process for creating these images is thus:

You enter a text description of the image you want.

You get back 4 different images.

Then you refine the text input and/or run the image again as a seed for new images. There are a lot of options here for using different program settings here. Midjourney is still in beta so it is ever-evolving.

For one finished image I will do several dozen to over 100 versions. To date, March 31, 2023, I have done 23,155 midjourney images since August, 2022.

The first set of images (1-13) were professionally printed. The second (14-21) I did with my new Canon P-200 pigment printer. The paper is archival Hahnemühle William Turner mounted on black Gatorboard.

You can give a simple prompt like “nomadic horsemen on Mars” but mine tend to be very complex, such as for the show main poster image titled, Windows on Other Worlds:

Movie poster, framed cover, [Mongol Cyberpunk Palace, Yurt, Casino, Mars Dome], Mongols in jury – rigged power armor carrying Russian advanced combat railguns with laser sights, Ögödei Khagan a Mongol General in jury – rigged elablorate cyberpunk powered armor riding a cybernetic Mongol war pony, titled “THE KANGAR UNION “, visibly says “Join the Horde! “, visibly says, “Copyright( C) 2035 Talhir Productions, all rights reserved”, on Mars, on the side of Mars cliffs, Mars box canyon, black shadows, ice mining, ice cave, ice, desert, distant volcano, plains, road, atvs, HEMTT, midnight, two small potato – shaped moons overhead, stars, milky way, blue neon sign says “Kangar Canyon Casino and Recreation Dome”, Mongols in jury – rigged cyberpunk power armor, cybernetic Mongol war ponies, two small potato – shaped moons, in the style of Potala Palace, in the style of Drepung Monastery, in the style of Tashilhunpo Monastery, in the style of Jakyung Monastery, in the style of Flash Gordon, in the style of Buck Rogers, in the style of John Carter on Mars, in the style of Alita, in the style of Masamune Shirow, in the style of steampunk, in the style of dieselpunk, in the style of cyberpunk, in the style of solarpunk, in the style of Genghis Khan, in the style of Mad Max Fury Road, in the style of John Carter of Mars, in the style of Wild Wild West, in the style of retrofuturism, in the style of Raygun Gothic, rule of thirds, proportion, volumetric lighting, cinematic lighting, Fibonacci series, Archemedian spiral, extremely complex, very fine black lines, mechanical drawing, technical drawing, drafting, orthographic, isometric, exploded view, call – outs, scale, metric, unreal engine 5, octane render, ray – traced, rendered, rendering, extremely detailed, black shadows, dust, starlight, precise, 3D, perspective, vanishing point, depth of field –h 6400 –w 9600 –testp –s 5000 –creative –upbeta

Format
Description
Style inspirations
Basic rules of artistic composition this can include the palette of colors used
Image height, width, algorithm, iterations, some additional flags

Then you do this process dozens of times for each of these displayed images in the show. That’s where the artistry, and craftspersonship, comes in. You are selecting and guiding the image, but also, often you get entirely surprising and unanticipated results. So you have to adapt to midjourney as it is. You don’t want to try to make an oboe sound like a trumpet. Each AI image generator has its own unique style based on its program, the data it is trained on, and the user interface and choices.

Many of these images are inspired by my unpublished stories and role-playing game titled, “Lobopods of Mars.” My “Lobopods of Mars” is a retrofuturistic pulp science fiction tale of settlers on Mars in an alternate 2034 in which the Cold War never happened and those tens of trillions of dollars were channeled into space colonization as a proxy for military conflict and a way of subsidizing the former defense aerospace industries.

Other images in the show are inspired by Leonardo da Vinci (11,17), the Elric books of Michael Moorcock (12), the lyrics of the song, “Woodstock,” by Joni Mitchell (13, 21), the political cartoons of Thomas Nast (14), the illustrations of John Tenniel (15), JRR Tolkien, in the style of Alphonse Mucha and in the style of Gustav Klimt (16), and the mangas Read or Die and Read or Dream (18).

My first venture into AI generated images of this generation of AI was using Deep Dream Generator on a project supported by a scholarship from Artisan’s Asylum. My next inspiration is to incorporate my photography into my midjourney images. Also to use ChatGPT to generate and analyze midjourney images and story content.

I am grateful to SCATV for hosting this exhibit. I live in Union Square, and SCATV is an essential educational and community resource and a beloved cornerstone of the community for the past 40 years.

Tune in to my weekly internet radio show every Thursday at 2 pm on Boston Free Radio, and coming soon, my interviews with my father, the Rev. George H. Hardy, about his life, titled, “Dad Remembers” on SCATV.

If you have any questions or comments, or if you are interested in purchasing any of these pieces on display, please do not hesitate to contact me.

For more information about my art see:

https://scanlyze.org/portfolio/

Henry Edward Hardy
35 Linden 2
Somerville, MA, USA 02143
hhardy01@gmail.com
@hhardy01@mastodon.social

Peace and love to you all. Thanks for coming!

–HH