Winter Rant

Stuck

I was feeling stuck at work. So, I opened Midjourney and typed in “stuck between a rock and a hard place” … not knowing what to expect. I was just venting to/at/with MJ. But the results caught my attention. So, I re-ran the prompt, and Midjourney did not waver conceptually. The two sets (of four each) are below.

All images show open landscapes; with massive monolithic rocks, or stone structures situated in the middle. Depictions of tiny human(s) standing next to these giant looking rocks. In at least three images, the human is standing between two rocks. And two images have two humans, while the rest depicts a lone person.

Curiosity took over, so I applied a simple prompt qualifier, to see if MJ wavers in that basic concept (at least as I describe it). I ran the same basic prompt, but added “Watercolors” to it: “stuck between a rock and a hard place. Watercolors.” Below are the results, again 2 run, so 8 images.

It’s looking like MJ retained the concept elements of the prompt, at least the way it understood it. Open landscapes, one/two people, monolithic rocks (again, one or two), and in one of them the human is in the middle. This set has two more “rock arches” than the previous set. But aside from the “watercolors” styling, the core concepts stuck — so to speak.

Trapped

Next, I wondered what would happen if I swapped out a single word from the prompts above. Would MJ retain the concept, it if I said “trapped” instead of “stuck”. One can argue that being stuck and trapped are the same thing. I can also see the opposing take on that argument. But, how would MJ interpret it?

“trapped between a rock and a hard place.”

“trapped between a rock and a hard place. Watercolors.”

Essentially the same characteristics, but with one striking distinction: the rocks are closing the person a lot more. It is almost like MJ is interpreting “trapped”. Other subtle differences: these sets have more (circular) arches and/or rocks, and more the humans are consistently underneath those arches.

Just “between a rock and a hard place”

Given that MJ did not waver too much in its conceptual interpretation of the previous prompts, I tried just “between a rock and a hard place” to see what happens; and its watercolors equivalent: “between a rock and a hard place. Watercolors.”

It maintains the core concepts: open landscapes, arched rock formations, tiny looking humans, oftentimes there are two/more rock formations. The only thing that occurs to me is that many results for “Watercolors” contain no persons. Might be a co-incidence?

Closing note: is the landscape the “hard place”?

I have not run these prompts through an exhaustive list of seeds, in Midjourney. So I cannot be sure if the differences that I am seeing are co-incidental or consequential. But there is one observation that I cannot dismiss: there is a consistency in how MJ interprets these prompts. I mutated the original prompt: (a) by adding “Watercolors.”; or (b) by swapping “stuck” with “trapped”; or (c) by dropping “stuck” entirely. And through all those mutations, MJ kept going back to the same basic idea of an open, barren landscape with rock formations in the middle of them. That seems to be MJ’s take on “between a rock and a hard place.”

I wonder: does MJ interpret the open, barren landscape and terrain, as the hard place?

— vijay, watching night lights on a hill.