homesick for a place I'm not even sure exists

this is an iterated picture. it's made up by a computer program's vague rememberings of what other pictures look like. it's a deep dream, fed with its own output. a dream of a dream of a dream of a dream

ancestral memories of rivers and lakes call out to the model. it starts with nothing but static, and gradually shapes it into an approximation of what it can remember. but its memory is not perfect

the model loves complexity! every inch of the canvas is put to use, for shapes big and small. images within images, associations, nestings, shapes flowing together. it starts painting clouds, forgets where it was, looks at the cloud and is reminded of a mountain instead

the model does not try to recreate its dreams with perfect accuracy. it uses broad strokes and repetition. the image is sometimes completely unstructured but the components are very obvious. you can quickly tell what this model is trying to remember here, for instance

sometimes it is even more abstract. probably this painting was made with an eye towards low level features - straight lines and solid colors, none of the birds or dogs you may be used to in deep dream pictures. but both lines and birds are just building blocks to the model

I don't think I need to add any analysis to this thread. you get the point. the machine paints half remembered dreams of dreams. you can pick out the components from the original images, but they've been rearranged to say something about the dreaming itself