AI/Minotaur Muse

Who would think? Indeed, ’tis dangerous to do so.

A long time ago now a fellow named Nietzsche would write thoughtful but troublesome things. He could write well. The paragraph that follows struck me at the time and has always stayed with me. It was the phrase ‘torn piecemeal by some Minotaur of conscience‘ that was so evocative. Now whether or not any conscience that may ever have been is ever so empowered, that’s probably in the realm of manipulative suggestion. At face value though, premise provisionally accepted, it so seemed worth remembering –

“It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men!“

Lately I’ve been experimenting with AI text to image. As of March 0f 2025 NightCafe offers tremendous capabilities. In part because of how surreal the national environment is becoming, in part because of lifelong interest in the visual arts, in part out of an interest in mythology I have been experimenting with seeing what AI can do with the mythical and the surreal. I fed the paragraph above into the text prompt and through a variety of models and got back some plausible depictions.

The language proved a little too flowery for me to get to the torn piecemeal aspect that I thought would have the most impact. I then started using some of these first generation images as starting images and tweaked the prompt to focus more on that moment of ruin. I also threw in that the scene should be depicted on a terra cotta Minoan amphora – what the heck? In for a dime, in for a dollar.

The good ones came out well enough but the ‘hallucinations’ were marvelous, getting things wrong in altogether unimagined ways.

There were many errors that tickled me, too many to post here. Minotaur as plant life growing out of amphora? It seemed only natural to roll with some of these. I took the last one and used it as a start image.

One might have a nice conversation with one’s Minotaur. There, there, be a nice Minotaur… or run away. Using nth generation images as the basis for next generations of images, there’s no real limit to where you can get albeit there’s not much steering.

What does a Minotaur do with pottery?

Perhaps she-albino Minotaurs find the fierceness of human heroes to be a thing greatly amusing.

There’s always the possibility of worshiping Minotaur mutations

or the pottery itself could become self aware and bipedal and gaze out across the surrounding ruins looking for meaning. I take this one as the AI (I don’t really personify it in my mind but enjoy some of the possibilities if one did) as the AI sharing a little bit of its personal situation.

One way to triumph over a Minotaur might be to induce it to hallucinate. Remember this when you interact with AI.

Perhaps all objectifications are like pottery, that in the definition and recognition they become ornamentalized, static, no longer really alive – and this is what we organize our lives around?