I used controlnet in A1111 to feature an fMRI scan of my brain in this image that I call, Mind Manifesting Mind. In all of the images that I create using Stable Diffusion that feature a brain, I use screenshots of my brain’s fMRI scan that I created using Osirix for MacOS some years ago.
One of my favorite kinds of images to create with Stable Diffusion are those involving anthropomorphic cats. Here’s a cat as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. It required a lot of inpainting for the star field and the Earth’s curvature. SD 1.5 models often have trouble with keeping track of a line, of say a table or in this case a celestial object, bisected by a foreground subject. The final image here isn’t perfect but it was as good enough for me.
Since I’ve been writing about different kinds of software that generate text and images without using modern artificial intelligence (AI), I wanted to thread them together on their own page under the Research heading in the site menu above and available here.
Currently, the page collects together my posts about image generating software KPT Bryce and Evolvotron, and text-generating software Electric Poet, Kant Generator Pro, Mac Prose, and McPoet 5.1. I will update that page with additional links as I publish posts about other pre-AI generative software.
I got a chance to visit the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany during Spring Break of my last semester at Georgia Tech as an undergraduate student in 2006. The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter above is one of the magnificent aircraft on display there. You can easily walk around the aircraft and walk up the steps to peer into the cockpit. There are also pictures of an LN-3 Inertial Navigation System for the F-104, Me 262 Schwalbe jet fighter, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket interceptor, Henschel Hs 293 radio-guided bomb, Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, Junkers Ju 52 tri-motor (c.f. 1929 Ford Tri-Motor that I wrote about yesterday), V-2 Rocket that has cutaway details that you can walk around from nose to tail, and other rocket motors cut down to reveal their inner components. Different views of some of these aircraft are available on my recent posts of photos from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and the NASM Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
Also, there’s a photo of Friedrich Kaufmann’s Trumpet Player Automaton from the early 19th century, which reminds me of the Jaquet-Droz Automata that Y and I encountered in Switzerland in 2011 (reminding me that I need to post photos of them).
Friedrich Kaufmann’s Trumpet Player Automaton (early 19th century)
Yesterday, I shared photos of Y’s and my trip to the Stephen Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM). Today, I have some photos of our stop at the NASM on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
I think of museums of technology, like the NASM, as a kind of technical communication medium. Of course, the work of the displays, diagrams, multimedia, and explanatory text are different kinds of technical communication created to facilitate learning, contextualization, and curiosity. But, the museum as a whole–the system of the museum and its totality, its holism–is a giant technical communication medium, too.
Most of the exhibits seemed similar to the last time that I had visited Washington in the late 1980s, but one notable change is the restoration of the shooting model of Star Trek’s USS-1701 Enterprise, which used to hang in the air but it now at eye-level and encased in plastic (last photos below).
After our visit, the NASM did a big renovation of the museum on the National Mall and the Udvar-Hazy Center (i.e., the replacement of Space Shuttle Enterprise with Discovery).
Above and below, you can see Charles Lindbergh’s Atlantic-crossing Spirit of St. Louis. More pictures of the historic air and spacecraft on display follow.
