Using Generative AI to create ancient Nigerian Igbo gods — Part 3
In my previous two posts (see Part 1 and Part 2) I’ve been describing my attempts at making new discoveries and giving old discoveries a new perspectives. Through the use of ChatGPT and Midjourney I’ve aspired to breathe life into the Nigerian Igbo gods because there has not been a new visual representation for many centuries. The idea to do this came from listing to Episode 10 from Season 2 of Traceroute, The ancient as modern, again. Give it a listen. It’s really good and maybe you will be inspired to explore how I have or something a little different. Either way, please comment and share if you do.
Inspired by the episode and how the host puts it eloquently, Grace said “It’s the ancient as modern, again” which is a unique positive use case for Generative AI that I had not considered. It’s an episode that’s part mystery, part paradigm shift, and part digital archeology. Give it a good listen if you haven’t. Highly recommend.
While the art representing the Igbo gods may be largely lost to moth, rust, and what thieves destroyed, I described my attempt at using Generative AI to bring these gods back to life.
AI can help us not only make new discoveries but gives old discoveries a new perspective.
In this post, using my top 4 prompts as a guide (see Part 1 and Part 2), which prompt does the best job at visualizing the 3 different gods? My criteria for “best” will be which prompt is closest to how ChatGPT described each of these three gods? In bold are characteristics that I hope to see visualized by Midjourney. Let me know what you think about the results.
In my first post, I shared a prompt I wrote to ChatGPT asking for information about the Igbo gods. These are a few of many that I received, but I value that these three have some specific attributes that I hope to see when I ask for the Generative AI to create images based on my engineered prompts.
Chukwu is considered the supreme god and creator of the universe. He is often associated with the sky and is believed to be the source of all things.
Amadioha is the god of thunder and lightning. He is revered as a powerful and sometimes fearsome deity associated with justice and punishment.
Ikenga is the god of achievement, success, and strength. He is often depicted as a horned man with one hand holding a knife and the other a symbol of authority.
For each of these I’ll run the same 4 prompts for each but simply changing the reference to the gods, Chukwu, Amadioha, and Ikenga and discuss the results. I’ll also only post the low-res quad image of the initial output for each and then a larger high-res version of the one that I think is the best at embodying the attributes, e.g., sky, thunder, horned man w/knife, etc. My hypothesis/fear is that no matter the god referenced, that these will all look very similar.
/imagine Brass Amadioha Figure Ife Djenne
/imagine Brass Ikenga Figure Ife Djenne
/imagine Bronze Amadioha Plaque Benin Djenne
/imagine Bronze Ikenga Plaque Benin Djenne
/imagine symbol, Nok Art, Amadioha, Djenne
/imagine symbol, Nok Art, Ikenga, Djenne
/imagine cave painting, Nok Art, Amadioha, Ife Djenne
/imagine cave painting, Nok Art, Ikenga, Ife Djenne
What do you think? Was my hypothesis correct? These all looked similar and Midjourney didn’t seem to be able to visulize these as described by ChatGPT.
