CROSS-SECTIONS
The latest test version of MidJourney, the V4, has enabled me to pursue an idea I’ve been toying with for a long time: a “living font” with glyphs that influence how a written work is interpreted.
All of the following poems are “cross-sections”, a short-form poetry format designed around a font that I created with MJ’s help. Each poem’s text also doubles as instructions for its interpretation. Underneath each piece, I note how this works.
Most of these involve zooming in on your screen to view the artwork inside individual letters (something that substack’s image size limit doesn’t allow), so I’ve put links to the full images on my server (warning: they’re like 20mb each).
“The Eye” [big version]
The first cross-section poem I wrote—one that I think is a good example of the most interesting parts of the format—starts off by asking the reader to create a mental association (“think of Onlyfans”). From there, it instructs them to “look at women” (zoom in on the word ‘women’). Let’s break down the last part, “using the eye in me to see futures”. The word ‘women’ contains ‘me’, and the ‘E’ glyph in ‘me’ has a one-eyed monster (maybe reminiscent of a Dungeons and Dragons beholder?) inside of it near the top. But what’s the monster staring at? Well, the one in ‘women’ is overlooking a graveyard, the image contained inside the N. The word ‘me’ also exists in the last line of the poem too, and is looking towards a T, whose glyph has a definite fungoid theme.
Breaking all that down, this is a poem juxtaposing sex and death. The voyeurism shit about the male gaze—“the eye in me”—is tied in with the visual language of the glyphs. There’s dual meaning with “futures” (the voice of the poem expressing disdain for a woman who makes a future for herself “manipulating” men), and following the gaze of the eye monster either reveals a graveyard (in ‘women’) or a fungi utopia (in ‘to’). Lots of misogynistic death-drive/sex-drive stuff going on here.
“Hadron”[big version]
Here’s a poem critical of science. Very hypocritical of me, a degenerate who is at this moment writing about a wondrous science toy that uses image processing algorithms to generate content.
Anyway, this one asks the reader to focus on the word “hadron.” The fact that you have to zoom in on ‘hadron’, a subatomic particle, is the first reference to the format. But once you’re in close, the poem asks you to reflect on scientific hubris (“Ha no”)... kind of literally, as it asks you to read the ‘on’ in hadron backwards, as ‘no’. Speaking of backwards, the strawman Dr (we’ll call him Dr. Harold as a reference to Stephen Gammell’s scary fucking illustrative style, which was used as a MidJourney prompt for most of these images) is sandwiched between letters that form NOAH. Now it’s all biblical and shit: all that killer app science compared and juxtaposed with Noah’s ark. Everyone wants to save civilization.
The last part of this one’s interpretation is the ‘look a nether staircase’, a reference to the R being filled with ascending and descending flights of stairs. Do these lead to enlightenment or Hell? See ‘nether’ to find out!
“And I”[big version]
This poem is about somebody identifying a criminal in a lineup. The language has some hints of maybe a relationship (personal, romantic, or who knows) between the criminal and the victim.
For this one, I was experimenting with giving very vague instructions. “He is in chains and I” is a hint. The letter ‘i’ is found in the words ‘chains’ and ‘I’. If you zoom in on the letter ‘i’, there’s a silhouetted figure inside of it. The same letter glyph also has a weird glowing portal in it.
There’s probably multiple interpretations for this one. Maybe this was a rape, where the criminal has been literally “in” the narrator’s body and/or mind? Does the weird glowiness of the glyph suggest something about how the narrator sees the perpetrator? The word “separates” could be meaningful in multiple senses.
I’m done talking, but here are some additional poems for your enjoyment:
“Yeezus”[big version]
“Necrosecurity”[big version]
“DIN”[big version]
MJ was used to generate the base images that I collaged to assemble the letter glyphs themselves, which was a laborious (but usually fun) process. I tried to prioritize images that best allowed me to achieve a 3D projection-style effect with the google font I used as base for the letters. I wanted each letter to have a sense of depth and surreal spatial logic.
The prompt used was always some variation of: cross-section view of [subject matter] with rooms, stephen gammell style --v 4
[subject matter] was replaced by whatever was on my mind at the moment. Some examples: “a dungeon”, “a prison”, “an underwater cave”. Below are some of the images generated by the prompts. This is an abridged list; in total, I probably generated 100+ images over the course of creating the 26 letter glyphs.
cross-section view of a fungus arcology with rooms, stephen gammell style
cross-section view of a vampire crypt with rooms, stephen gammell style
cross-section view of a queer space with rooms, stephen gammell style
cross-section view of a haunted hospital with rooms, stephen gammell style