Using Generative AI to exploring architecture style of MC Escher using MidJourney
I’m a fan of weird architecture such as the Bradbury Building, the moving staircases in Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series, and the art of M.C. Escher. Using Generative AI like MidJourney I can explore the design by writing prompts that define my medium, style, content, content, parameters, etc.
M.C. Escher Style
Maurits Cornelis (M.C.) Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for most of his life neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, Harold Coxeter and crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.
Prompt: /imagine: painting, large library labyrinth, style of MC Escher, black and white
Bradbury Building Content
The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California, United States. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary skylit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and their ornate ironwork. The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury and constructed by draftsman George Wyman from the original design by Sumner Hunt.It appears in many works of fiction and has been the site of many movie and television shoots and music videos.
Prompt: /imagine: cinematic shot of inside Bradbury Building, style of mc escher, — s 1000
Hogwarts’ Moving Staircases Content
Harry Potter is a series of stories for young adults that follow the magical education of three young wizards. Transformed from novels to the big screen, the set designers had a lot to live up to as readers usually imagine their own idea of what places look like, forming an unspoken standard and sense of expectation. This creates quite the challenge as the scenes are interpreted into a visual field and must not only match what is written but also add another layer to the overall story.
The staircases in the Harry Potter films exemplify the importance of set design to the feeling and reality of a movie. The staircases in the book are known as being a very magical and confusing experience as they change at random intervals to lead to different levels and passages. In the movie, these grand staircases are portrayed as heavy stone and literally take on a life of their own as they transform in the middle of scenes, interacting quite realistically with the characters and the story. The large atrium, in which these many intertwining staircases are built, is also adorned completely with assorted picture frames that bring about a random, paranormal sensation. This helps to perpetuate the insanity of the story as the subjects of the paintings travel from one picture to another, seemingly in a world of their own. The design of the actual space is relatively dark, heavy, and traditional, adding to the mystery and sense of history in Hogwarts, the school for wizardry. The haphazardness of the hanging frames creates the sensation of misdirection, deepening the confusion of the ever-changing staircases.
Prompt: /imagine: cinematic shot of inside looking up of the atrium of ever changing staircases from Harry Potter with staircases moving from platform to platform seven floors up.
What do you think? What building or style should I explore next?
