Today's Midjourney community daily theme was stairs. I did not really think much of it and didn't intend to participate too much but somehow I kept finding new angles I wanted to see and ended up with some 200 renders. Mostly anthropomorphism attempts, then peculiar oddities; a few failures and a few interesting successes.
Prompts are complete except for ratio arguments. All prompts manifested by Midjourney.
I've tried this prompt a few times before, trying to replicate a kind of horse-blur in the style of durational works like Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," but I have had little success. Afterward I tried similarly with a dog which also failed to materialize.
AA. long exposure photograph of a horse descending a staircase
Trying to avoid dull stair images I went with an attempt utilizing patterning keywords. I was hopeful to have clear "imaginary" and "non-imaginary" space which the stair bridged the distance of.
AB. staircase to the imaginal, fractal tesselation visual-illusion espionage
I tried a few attempts at anthropic-stairs, first with mud wrestling and then with a "exhausted from a jog" stairway; while still no humanized staircase entity emerged, this one seemed strange.
AE. anthropic stair-person celebrating, cartoon illustration
I retreated from humanizing efforts for a moment...
AF. one stair stares at staircase to starry staring stair case of staring stairway ways of stares, accurate scientific illustration of symbolic iconography of staircase and staring
After a few more attempts at humanizing - both a staircase-human taking an elevator, and a lazy staircase that would rather read tabloids, there came a drunk diorama which, with some open interpretation, could be closer at least. But where is my human staircase?
AI. drunk staircase trips over elevator room, accurate diorama made by 12-year-old for science fair
Perhaps if I added a human concept like politics I could imbue the staircase with something intriguing.
AJ. flamboyantly politically-radical staircase fights for revolution of the hallway proletariat, divisible style ascertained from astrological implication of spoon divination
Another temporary retreat from humanizing the staircase.
AK. EXTREME staircase, MEGA CRAZY EXTREME WEIRD, 1000% accurate STAIR cooking show
Another attempt at humanizing.
AL. frustrated staircase fails to pay off mortgage and has its home repossessed by the bank
Okay, look, maybe it's harder than I thought to make a staircase a human being. I don't know if you've ever tried to humanize a staircase, but I suggest you come with a better plan than I had. I retreated yet again. What could invigorate a stair aesthetic? I thought of sand, something open and fluid; of course a sand staircase would be a little straightforward, so I figured I would melt it with space lasers. How can one go wrong with space lasers? Neat images, but hardly what I sought.
AM. sand staircase melted into molten glass by space lasers, inaccurate fantasy depiction 1968
Look, crafting a melted glass staircase with space lasers takes a lot of effort, and sometimes you just don't have the overhead for labor to afford such a thing and you just have to get some people in the neighborhood to help out.
AN. poor quality stairs, amateur stairs, folk stair construction, improper building codes, failed safety hazards, loose stair steps, unaccountable contractors
A brief morale repose. Does it matter that it failed? There's no way MJ could manage this one.
AO. scooby doo and the gang unmask the villain only to find out he was a staircase
Okay, okay, Scooby has more important things to do, and the chances of the villain being a staircase is not surprisingly rare. Depth is a real thing, let us try to modify that aspect.
AP. photograph of an illusion of stairs drawn on flat sidewalk in chalk
Okay it's something. As another morale booster I thought I'd try to reimagine Danny Devito as Frank in IASIP when he was disguised as a piece of furniture. Surely being a staircase would be similar, but I'm let down and decide not to hunt it out.
AQ. danny devito hides in a staircase
Maybe I have just given staircases too much credit. Surely there is something more convenient, yet this prompt failed as well.
AR. chichen-itza temple staircase replaced with escalator
Perhaps staircases and elevators aren't all that different. Let's try a conglomerate - and it failed, but really what was I expecting?
AS. staircase-elevator-escalator-ladder manifest conglomeration
Maybe with Mr. Horse descending the staircase I wasn't direct enough that it was supposed to be a durational piece. At best I found something with a dancer at the top.
AT. durational long-exposure timelapse photograph of Krusty the Clown falling down an infinite staircase
There must be a way to fill the space between escalator and staircase, and its cousins the elevator and ladder. At best I can thank Midjourney for trying.
AU. a ladder discarded onto a staircase-escalator to the elevator
Let's get serious. The representation of the staircase is one of pattern. The pattern is implicated in its hope of climbing. I give up and retreat with an awkward offer - give me something I can be curious about.
AV. escalating staireotyping, ladders to praxis sagacialism --q 2
My recursive deliberation seemed to find something so I pushed it further.
AW. stairs made of stairs made of stairs made of stairs made of stairs and is made of stairs that is made out of stairs that are made out of stairs which are made out of stairs, and then the pattern is exaggerated as we ride the monte carlo --q 2 --s 12000 --chaos 12
Fine, can't you just be what I want? Whatever it is that I want, which I'm unclear on, look, it's not your fault --- can you make sure the smells are deleted? I don't want them to be in the picture. Apparently this means that the scene is actually quite without smells but I have my reservations.
AX. fantasy staircase mired in arrested development, abysmally inaccurate details, deleted smells
A retreat. The staireotyping is real. Can't you find my what I want? I will use more exacting language so you can be sure, and maybe you will walk away as enlightened as I am from this. Whatever it is I appreciate it - and I end up appreciating it quite a lot. The first image has strange color smudges that really drew me in, and the second these fascinating textures, almost crummy.
AY. a convivial praxmatic staireotyping of the right-angled calvalcade, orthogonal render with metaphorical special sauce
These ended up fairly boring but I wanted to explore an isometric lens. In my mind the idea of a staircase from chaos to order was quite literal, that the bottom would be dispersed and decentralized in squalid ambiguity, and the top in some kind of overbearing clean organization. I did not attain my vision. It was strange to me, all these attempts, that the stairway always held the same scene at its beginnings and its ends, and I began to seek it as a play space.
AZ. crystal staircase from chaos to order, isometric camera
I sought another gradient to represent the staircase, hopeful that it would elaborate two different scenes and a movement between them. I received something less partisan than I wanted, but some sense of the gradient was present.
AAA. polarity of politics, stairway of bipartisanship, isometric camera, themes of dungeons and dragons and salads and politics
Let's just be literal here in what I'm requesting. You figure it out Midge.
AAB. stairway as visual allegory of metaphorical stairs
Here, we can figure this out together. Maybe Midge just didn't want to put the effort into assuming what the metaphor was supposed to be. That's fine. So I moved onto something more important, for the unfortunate stair people.
AAC. advice for moving left in the stairwell, illustrated cover for stairway instruction manual 1986
No we need something more, this is too complicated.
AAD. illustrated book cover of "how to walk down the stairs", first edition august 1992, surreal, gimmicky and ambivalent
This is all a bit much - but it went on.
