Year Zero, a period of dystopia, began on February 10th 2022 according to ancient Nine Inch Nails (NIN) lore. During this period, a fundamentalist religious government overseas an omniscient Bureau of Morality and a strange phenomenon known as “The Presence”. In “The Presence” is two massive spectral arms reaching from the sky is spotted across the country.
The alternate reality game, Year Zero accompanied the NIN album of the same name. 42 entertainment designed the game. The game commenced during a golden age of commercial ARGs along with an Audi campaign, ARG companions to major TV shows and an “interactive clothing” company.
Designer/photographer Rob Sheridan, presented the most creative Year Zero imagery. Fans of NIN followed USB sticks stashed in concert bathrooms, images hidden in song files and cryptic messages on T-shirts.
Volst Institute for Interdimensional Research (VIIR) posted an enigmatic tweet on March 29th 2022 that followed forgotten images of a forgotten lab. It was filled with organic horrors pushed through from another dimension. This was the start of Sheridan’s own experiment of ARG using AI art to display a mix of cosmic horror and alt-history science fiction. The Institute invites “players” to examine documents from the fictional institute founded in 1958 by a physicist named Florian Volstoff.
The concept of VIIR got launched when Sheridan was invited to the early beta phase of a new AI art service called Midjourne. VIIR harnesses AI art in a meaningful way and is one of the first in purpose.
The VIIR documents comprises of eerie snapshots of bone growths emerging from stereos, delicate jellyfish-like structures, arcane research sketches and rooms crisscrossed with bony tendrils.
Sheridan noticed on Discord that most Midjourney users focussed on conventional ideas of art and beauty. He also felt at the time that he was using the software in a wrong way. This sentiment has also been echoed by others using AI art tools.
Initially Sheridan felt weird about the results. Midjourney is trained on the work of countless other artists like all other AI art bots. People may look at Midjourney as another tool which can create entirely new art. Sheridan is aware how this facilitates the fear of artists about robots taking their jobs.
Sheridan went viral with a delightfully ghoulish AI art parody of the Met Gala on May 3rd 2022. His tweet became very popular in a threat called “Images From Hell” which was full of body horror takes on pop culture.
Midjourney decided to adhere to Discord’s rules when it came to their images creation policies. These policies didn’t allow “real media depicting gore, expensive violence or animal harm, especially with the intention to harass or shock others”. Thus they expanded their list of banned terms that even included “body horror”, “Cronenberg” and “flesh”. These were the terms that made VIIR possible.
Since then Sheridan has branched out to Open AI’s DALL-E2, which has much tighter restrictions than Midjourney. When it comes to censorship, Sheridan feels that companies should be responsible to avoid even the slightest possibility of generating a realistic murder scene or something that can be used in a crime.
As of now, VIIR fans have to wait for Sheridan to finish the story. Many have inquired if Sheridan will expand it to a game of movie. He mentioned that VIIR has been on a short hiatus while he have been consumed with a different kind of horror; a newborn baby. He had to increase creativity in the way he talked to the Midjourney bot as some of the conceptual terms used in the original VIIR image “recipe” have been banned.
The evolution of Midjourney’s content restrictions will impact the way the people tell stories on what is seen as the best text to image generators in the present time. This however might possibly lose the use of provocative body forms of expression.
According to Sheridan AI art platforms are something to be harnessed in service of the artist. Sheridan does possess concerns about companies trying to wholly own the fruits of their software. These bots have been trained in their craft by using the entire history of human artistry. We should also ensure the existence of comparable open-source alternatives that everyone can use and retain the rights to their work.
Sheridan states that there are plenty of valid concerns and plenty of ways in which new tech that absorbs the fruit of human labour can go down dark paths. It’s upto the artists to get involved and watch what these companies are doing and be a part of the conversation.
