soundgarden
21:01 Saturday, 1 October 2022
The original music video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” — released in 1994 and directed by Howard Greenhalgh — was plenty strange. However, that didn’t stop an AI from generating a new clip with even creeper results.
Created by Midjourney (an “independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species”), the program essentially turned each of the song’s lyrics into a beautiful representative image.
At first, that may not sound too foreboding. However, considering that the track includes lines such as “Call my name / Through the cream / And I’ll hear you scream again” and “In disguises no one knows / Hides the face / Lies the snake,” there was a lot of potential for the software to produce something genuinely horrifying.
And that’s exactly what it did. Well, to be more accurate, the AI invented imagery that’s both utterly nightmarish and awe-inspiringly dreamlike. For instance, there are several flashes of wistfully ominous faces, as well as gorgeous landscapes, apocalyptic skylines and Lovecraftian depictions of monsters.
From beginning to end, the footage provides breathtakingly vivid and varied glimpses into heaven, hell and everything in-between. (If we didn’t know any better, we’d swear that much of it was made by 18th century painter/poet William Blake.)
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time the program visually reimagined classic rock and metal songs, as it crafted equally captivating clips for Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” back in September 2022.
That said, “Black Hole Sun” might be its magnum opus thus far, and you can view the entire collage below:
Midjourney AI’s Music Video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”
Which of the AI’s videos do you like the most? Let us know!
