Cause to celebrate!
Today was a huge day for me on my journey as an emerging artist. After submitting several works to the Strange History: Alternate Realities open call curated by Historic Crypto for Sloika's Montage space on the SuperRare platform recently, I learned this morning that my piece titled 'The Unraveling' was chosen among the second group of five winners. The artwork that I shared in my previous blog post, 'Gutenberg's AI Scriptorium', was also one of my submissions to this open call, and was selected separately last week for the Strange History world on Foundation.
🛸 OPEN CALL WINNER! 🛸
— historic-crypto.eth (@Historic_Crypto) July 31, 2023
Welcome @eirrann_eth to STRANGE HISTORY: ALTERNATE REALITIES!
Your work is headed to @SuperRare as part of our @spacemontage Exhibit with @sloikaxyz 💎
Congratulations! ✨
(5/5 Artists Announced Today) pic.twitter.com/xht8BSu7Qj
This AI-generated documentary photography work explores an alternate timeline in which the tension of the Cold War escalated far beyond control, resulting in an event now referred to as "The Unraveling" by the few survivors. In the late 20th century, an underground nuclear project, codenamed "Cerberus," sought to create a weapon of such devastating power that its existence would bring an end to all global conflicts.
In 1986, a test detonation of the Cerberus device resulted in an unprecedented and catastrophic disaster. Scientists had gravely underestimated the weapon's quantum-physical effects. The explosion triggered a subatomic chain reaction that began to unravel the very atomic fabric of the Earth. Within mere hours, the reaction spread globally, disintegrating everything it touched. The Earth's surface was engulfed in fire and shockwaves before breaking down at a molecular level, culminating in the complete obliteration of the planet.
The inhabitants of an international colony on the Moon bore witness to this shocking spectacle. They could only watch in silent horror as the Earth, their home, was wiped from existence. With the disappearance of Earth, its gravitational anchor, the Moon was flung into space, carrying the last of humanity with it.
This calamity led the survivors to make a solemn pledge to abandon all weapons of mass destruction forever. In their wandering, lunar exile, the remnants of humankind became unified in a quest for a peaceful existence while relentlessly searching the cosmos for a new home and a chance to start again.
To make 'The Unraveling', I created the foreground and background images separately in MidJourney, then upscaled them in Topaz Photo AI. I then merged those in Photoshop using AI generative fill and other tools to create a cohesive appearance. Finally, I post-processed the image in Lightroom to enhance the documentary photography aesthetic I was looking for.
I will also be creating two more pieces to explore other points on this alternate timeline ahead of the launch of Strange History: Alternate Realities on Friday, August 11th. Since my first piece covers the moment in 1986 when the disastrous nuclear test caused 'The Unraveling', my second and third pieces will focus on: 1) several years prior to that, showing people working on the nuclear device in a lab setting; and 2) generations later, as the lunar colonists cast into space have established a tenuous but sustainable presence and are searching for a new home along the moon's new trajectory.
I have a lot of work ahead to craft pieces of equal quality to 'The Unraveling', which is the most complex experiment with AI in-/out-painting that I have undertaken to date. Stay tuned for more updates and maybe even a sneak peek as we approach the launch date!
