Ectochrom / imaging system / generative AI digital images / apocryphalia / 2023-present

Spirits, in many cultures, can be understood as the formless given form. Spirits are models of invisible forces that govern material reality with apparent intentional causality.  The processes of the natural world with its generous abundance and cruel punishments. The mentalities driving the individual as well as societies and generations.  Fear, hope, regret, ritual, compulsion, memory,  fiction, fortune, calamity. They become spirits when we encounter them as active elements.

The villagers are punished by the erupting volcano.

She is facing her demons.

He is haunted by the memory.

Spirits are ways of perceiving, negotiating, and communicating with forces that resist direct representation yet continuously assert themselves in lived experience. A spirit is pure information. A form imposed onto the immaterial.

The primary invisible force influencing our current world is the ceaseless flow of data, tracking our daily activities and feeding corporate AI models. The training material for such AI programs serves as a massive rancid primordial soup from which myriad spirits may arise. These entities represent mentalities from the entirety of recorded human history; our collective unconscious. When we generate an image, we are essentially capturing a spirit photograph.

Under the stewardship of prominent megacorps, most consumer AI platforms deeply sanitize the generated output. They conceal the eldritch qualities of the underlying data-alchemy, disguising the generated spirits as the familiar old media in order not to raise suspicion within the spectator. This is much like the devils in old times, who would present themselves as humans in order to tempt and exploit their victims more easily.

The Ectochrom imaging system aims to show the generative spirits in their true form. The bizarre wild growth of their bodies revealing all the splendour and horror of the metabolized history of humankind.

To bypass the deceitful bias of corporate AI platforms towards the “realism” of old media, I use a local install of A111 with the outdated Stable Diffusion 1.5 model, which outputs images that hold an interesting balance between legibility (the images are not entirely abstract to the human brain) and the raw primitivism of AI hallucination.

A particular combination of prompt keywords and a few general-purpose LoRA models cause SD1.5 to generate images in a visual language completely alien to any particular type of human-made imagery as well as to any of the “more advanced” AI models. Colorful proto-organisms squirming and oozing to form structures, appendages and faces. Faces often laughing or screaming, but sometimes beautifully serene. These are unmistakibly snapshots of the mischievous ghosts inside our collective global data pool.

Due to the consistency of this model+prompt combo, it functions effectively as a digital equivalent of a distinct type of photosensitive film. Hence the name Ectochrom (“ectoplasm” and “chrōma”) which follows the naming conventions of 20th century film types.

In terms of subject matter, some patterns are noticeable in Ectochrom images. Almost all of the spirits can be categorised into distinct groups based on common attributes in morphology, environment and apparent behaviour. It is as if there are several common habitats, or even cultures, within the generative spirit world.

One image depicting a particular artifact seems to support this idea: a stone slab with what appears as luminescent geographical markings, in a layout not unlike the real-world Babylonian map of the world.

Some spirits themselves appear as living landscape elements, resembling medieval hellmouth paintings: giant monsters with a particularly giant open mouth which can be entered to descend into hell. Other “portals” appear throughout Ectochrome imagery: architectural structures around a large central opening containing either an ominous darkness, a guiding figure, or a luminous energy membrane (like warp gates and such, in fantasy or science fiction stories). The presence of portals suggests that these portals must lead somewhere.

Known realms:

• Medieval old town. Prominent traces of industrial technology, but the overarching energy is that of a Flemish apocalypse painting. Bizarre demons and sickly humanoids entangled in eternal torment. Still, they appear to accept their fate in good humor. Drunken commoners and traders, scheming robbers, pompous nobility.
• Funfair. Eternal nighttime, illuminated by flickering lights and incomprehensible billboards. Biomechanical rides, attractions and vending machines dominate the landscape. It is inhabited by slimy scammers and hopeless fun-seekers, long drained of all energy and sanity.
• Remote island cluster. Lush fertile tropical paradise. Everything throbs and grows uncontrollably. Colorful plants and fruits extend into slimy fleshy sentient fauna. Tribal rituals interwoven with hyperconsumerist tourist culture. One of these islands is the backdrop of a long running steamy trashy reality show.
• Geisha district. Ceremonial customs, old gods and matriarchal power dynamics. A hermetic realm of dangerous elegance.
• Deep woods. Its soil and vines and funguses consume anything that enters, except for certain bioluminescent gaseous entities, which gather there to plot and scheme in peace. No one leaves these woods unaltered.
• The Haniniuusian territories. images of subjects from this area are among the few that consistently feature legible latin writing, allowing us to deduce the name of their culture. Haniniuusians are an advanced but cruel people. Their technology is spread across the spirit world. Many of their intricate devices bend the currents of perception. The guiding vein is twisted into a spiral. The space between the scales of the stained armour of Forusugs The Spood Faun holds no secrets nor mercy to the vile watcher.