The power of words, to create worlds, inspire, spark the imagination of millions and live on as long as there are dreams to dream. Fascinating. Stimulating. It gives life meaning. Something an AI will never understand. Not ever. Unless, of course, the answer is 42. It may appear to understand and maybe we won’t be able to tell the difference anymore at some point (Hello, Westworld), but does that signify intelligence?
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
—Albert Einstein
NB: No text prompts were used in crafting this video. It was also my first time setting up, recording, cutting and editing a podcast. A fun experience, learning a lot of new things.
The Desire to Create
I sat down with Joe Reeve, Lead Car Designer to talk about the process of creating from the word to the image, specifically for my upcoming novel SPHEREAN.
I recommend watching the video podcast. Below you find a recap of the main points.
In the beginning, there was the Car Doodle
Joe started to draw cars at the age of four and that desire to create and express his creativity this way stayed with him and it’s that path he followed to become a designer of cars and other things, like pods!
From the moment we are born, we are influenced and inspired by what is around us and by those who came before us. We absorb everything. For Joe, it was designers like Marcello Gandini or Giorgetto Giugiaro, for me it was authors like Isaac Asimov or J.R.R. Tolkien, among many others, similar to designers and writers all over the world. We share the same pretext, we create from the same pretext. So did those before us and so will those who come after. Seemingly infinite variations of the same text.
And then there was the Taiki
When you follow your dream, you do what you are meant to do, you create what you are destined to create. You design a concept car. Joe did, no doubt drawing from the influences and inspirations he mentioned before.
Creations that inspire more creations. And in the best of ways, we sometimes create a kind of euphoria that spreads and becomes a source of lasting joy and meaning, very personal meaning. We create stories that become memories, like “How Joe got his concept car onto a poster and into a movie, sort of.” (06:18) True to the movie’s theme, it looped out of Looper, depending on what version you watched.
Science Fiction, Technology, Society
Science Fiction is Fiction until it is Science. Some things will always remain fiction, like automatic sliding doors. What utter nonsense, it will never work. Doors that open when you come near them. Oh, wait. Star Trek TOS (1966) had fake ones, and now we have real ones. Science, not Fiction. Although, Wells did it before in When the Sleeper Wakes (1899).
The Land Ironclads (1903) a short story by H. G. Wells describes fictional tank warfare. By 1916 it was no longer fiction and Wells became a “Prophet of the Future.”
Or from “Cinematophote” in E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909) to Television. It’s a long list and it will only get longer. Sure, you could argue, these things would have been invented anyway, with or without any SF literature. To those I say: never underestimate the power of words. Edward Bulwer-Lytton has a phrase for this, which I am sure you know, shared pretext, and all.
Hero Cars and Personality
When I first met with Joe to talk about the possibility of him designing some vehicles based on my novel, I had some ideas about style but not many details about the shape and the AI-generated concept art was no help at all, it was boring. We talked about current technology and future possibilities, like removing the requirement of guiding rails. These could be embedded in the ground in the future when Cost is no longer a factor, or they are not needed at all. Unshackled from the many constraints of commercial design, he went to work and we had a great many exchanges over coffee but it was not until we talked more about the character of Felice Vongestalt and her personality that we narrowed in on the design, imbued it with meaning, and after a few quick iterations, there it was: The S-zer0. What a beauty.
Felice is no Batwoman, but the S-zer0 is her Hero Pod. From that pod, you may already start to have an image of Felice in mind, and her diamond eyes. She had them custom-made. Oh, the wonders she must see…
I don’t know about you, but I do not believe AI (no, not me) will ever be able to create using this kind of imagination. Can you imagine?
Can we be original?
Is it possible to truly be original in an increasingly connected world, where everything has been written and everything has been read… by AI? AI can copy you. How original. AI can iterate. AI can rearrange. “AI” today is a clever and complex assortment of scripts and algorithms, a tool that can be useful but has nothing to do with intelligence or imagination for that matter, and it certainly won’t design any original cars any time soon or write anything original. Humans, on the other hand, we dream, we imagine, and we get inspired by a leaf dancing in the wind, or by some words on a page to design a quantum levitation pod. We can be original. It’s not easy and it’s also not something we can do intentionally, I think. That’s OK. We don’t always have to be original.
There is comfort in the familiar, too. A Taxi Pod that pays homage to something you saw and liked many years ago is maybe not original, it is still the coolest Taxi Qlev Pod on the block. And that’s more than enough.
As Joe mentioned, you don’t need to be a car designer to design original-looking cars, see Joey Ruiter’s Reboot Buggy or the Lo Res Car by Rem D Koolhaas. Sometimes, we need to adjust our view, leave the box and find inspiration elsewhere, often in the most unlikely places.
The Favourite & The Future
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” And that word is S-zer0.
I hope you like the image, the design, the idea, the concept, the future, dystopian as it may be. As I progress (Chapter 7 at this point) I will share more details about SPHEREAN, the world, its characters and their pods.
If you like this content, please don’t forget to click the little heart and leave a comment. It helps to keep the pixels from fragmenting. Thank you!
Credits
Qlev Pod Design by Joe Reeve, designer extraordinaire. If you have design needs, send your inquiries here and I will get you in touch with the master.
All Qlev Pod concepts and designs are based on the novel SPHEREAN by Alexander Ipfelkofer.
Creation & Meaning