Kunstformen der Technik: Haeckel-Inspired AI Gadget Field GuideKunstformen der Technik: Haeckel-Inspired AI Gadget Field Guide
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Kunstformen der Technik: Art Forms of Technology, after Ernst Haeckel (1904).
I found Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904) in the Smithsonian Libraries scan on the Biodiversity Heritage Library and picked eight of his black-ground plates of radiolarians, shells, corals and diatoms. I cropped away captions and borders and trained a Recraft V4 style on them. Then I asked the style to catalogue the creatures of our own time: drones drift as jellyfish, game controllers scuttle as crabs, e-scooters curl as seahorses and earbud cases open like clams holding two pearls. The result is Kunstformen der Technik, a field guide to the gadgets around us, drawn as if Haeckel had found them in the sea.
Social post: https://x.com/nerminsab31/status/2115037606631133300
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VIMAL's avatar
Very nice
Akh's avatar
The earbud case opening like a clam with two pearls is the single best plate-to-object match I've seen in this challenge. Haeckel catalogued whatever the sea gave him — of course his style would end up cataloguing our gadgets the same way. Beautifully reasoned, not just beautifully drawn.
Nermin's avatar
Thank you, that one was my favourite to figure out. Once I saw the case as a shell, the earbuds had to be pearls. Really appreciate you taking the time to look closely.
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