Ben Tibbetts Studio      Home    Services    Archive    Students    About    Contact    Now    Store    Subscribe Birth of a Gorgon Download mp4 YouTube mirror Newgrounds mirror (animation only) Birth of a Gorgon began as an art song, based on a text by my friend Ken Hallowell. The poem depicts the unhappy transfiguration of a beautiful woman into a Gorgon (e.g. Medusa), with snakes for her hair and a petrifying gaze. The performance of this art song was by Austin-based soprano Liz Cass and myself on piano. The animation that accompanies this music was rendered by artificial intelligence which uses millions of captioned images from around the Internet to produce novel imagery. Each image began as a text prompt, which the software would then attempt to represent on the screen as faithfully as possible through tens of thousands of iterations. Some of the imagery that the computer produced was quite beautiful and relatively faithful to the original concept. As for the rest...well, we tried. Now, although none of the imagery in this video is anything that you couldn't put on in, say, an office environment, I should warn that some of it is a bit disturbing, and probably not for children. Sheet music for Birth of a Gorgon is available to subscribers. Birth of a Gorgon A beautiful lady, Seduced by a god In a temple, Should be more careful. This holy place, Defiled by your lustings, Will anger someone. A once beautiful lady Is cursed. The beautiful, waving hair Turns serpentine. The eyes so beautiful Now petrify. Out of your passion was born a monster: You. A beautiful lady upsets Athena. A Gorgon is born.  Ben Tibbetts Studio      Home    Services    Archive    Students    About    Contact    Now    Store    Subscribe Search     Copyright © 2006-2023 Ben Tibbetts change log