Bestiary

Bestiary — a medieval book about animals. It includes the creature’s name, its habits, and a moral lesson. Many of the creatures described in bestiaries were known to the authors only through secondhand accounts, so the artist often constructed unfamiliar beings from direct observation. This project continues that practice of knowledge derived from narratives.

Stable Diffusion is learning the style of English bestiaries from a 71-miniature piece, and it is drawing animals their authors could not have known: opossums, skunks, kangaroos, pandas, and sloths. Each unknown creature has a rhyme—a beast from the bestiary with similar habits. For instance, the opossum pretends to be dead, like a fox.