A dimly lit government office with a long empty table covered in neatly arranged documents and folders, illuminated by cold fluorescent lights, creating a quiet but unsettling bureaucratic atmosphere.
Posted in AI Experiments

Oulipo and AI: Unleashing Literary Potential

Posted on by Mike

Today I have been exploring ‘Oulipo’, which is short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or “workshop of potential literature”. This was a French literary movement founded in 1960 by writer Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais. The group believed that creative constraints, far from limiting a writer, could unlock new possibilities that free writing would never discover.

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A detailed pen and ink illustration in blue-black tones depicting a rural crossroads. A single weathered wooden signpost stands at the fork, carrying two arrow-shaped signs: Salvation pointing left and Damnation pointing right. Overgrown grass fills the verges, trees line the horizon, and the two dirt tracks curve away into the distance in opposite directions.
Posted in stories

An AI Image to An AI Story

Posted on by Mike

For today’s story I gave Claude the image (created by Midjourney) and asked it to suggest various prompts. I like this one –

Horror Monologue / Gothic AI Grandad blog register — inanimate narrator, quiet dread.
The signpost itself narrates. It has stood at this crossroads for 200 years. It has watched every single person choose Damnation. Not one ,not one, has ever taken the left fork. It stopped believing in the other sign long ago. But it cannot take it down.

We then spent some time to and fro refining the story until I was happy with the finished piece. (Is that curation on my part?)

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Landscape image of a theatrical stage framed by dark red curtains, where a magician in a black coat and top hat steps into a glowing cabinet. From the opposite side, a luminous, human-shaped AI figure emerges, its body patterned with light and circuitry. Warm golden light surrounds the magician, while cool blue light envelops the AI figure, with mist drifting across the stage to create a surreal, unsettling contrast between human and machine.
Posted in AI and Creativity

The Vanishing Act

Posted on by Mike

A note before you read this: this post was written by Claude. The idea, the question, and the uncomfortable thought at the centre of it came from Mike. The words didn’t. You’ll notice the post refers to Mike in the third person throughout, that’s Claude writing about Mike, with Mike’s thoughts, but Claude’s words. The distance is deliberate. It felt more honest than pretending otherwise.

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Landscape image of a bleak, dystopian industrial factory at night, where rows of exhausted workers in worn uniforms operate machinery under harsh lights. A lone armed guard stands in the centre, watching over them. Above the scene, a large glowing red sign reads “OBEY. WORK. SERVE.” while smoke, steel structures, and dim towers recede into the background, creating a cold, oppressive atmosphere.
Posted in AI Experiments

One Syllable at a Time

Posted on by Mike

Introduction

I asked Claude for an idea for an AI experiment and it suggested writing a Drabble (100-word story) with a simple but brutal constraint. The prompt it gave itself was:
“Write a 100-word dystopian drabble set in a government factory, using only monosyllabic words. No two-syllable words. None at all.”

Here is Claude’s ‘thinking’ behind this idea:

It sounds like a neat trick, but it turns out to be more than that. Short words hit hard. They strip out any chance to be poetic or evasive. You can not hide behind long words when all you have is “bleed” and “led out” and “cold.” The constraint forced a kind of blunt, bruised voice that felt right for the subject. Whether it works is for you to judge.

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An elderly man stands in a dimly lit kitchen, facing an open refrigerator, appearing uncertain and still. Around him are scattered notes, a remote control, glasses, and paperwork, suggesting memory loss and confusion. A television in the background shows subtitles, while personal items like a licence plate and notebook hint at fragments of memory that remain.
Posted in stories

What Was I Saying?

Posted on by Mike

One Prompt, One story, One Thought

Every now and again I give an AI a single prompt and let it write a short story. I do not edit the result. I simply choose one worth keeping. Below you will find the exact prompt, the story it produced, and one brief thought that stayed with me after reading. Nothing more.

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