Ben Golden

Personal work

Slow Boat

After a marathon viewing of The Expanse on the longest night of the year, the glass towers of the Upper East Side stop reading as buildings and start reading as ships. Nine attempts to see the one across the street the way it already looked.

The building across the street, mistaken for a colony ship

SeriesNine renders from one photograph SourceiPhone photograph InfluenceThe Expanse, watched in volume that winter MethodSDXL in ComfyUI, with IPAdapter, LoRAs and ControlNet. RuleThe scene changes, the window frame never does.
A dark room at night, an angled window above a desk, a residential tower with scattered lit windows outside.
The source photographUpper East Side, December 2024. The tower across the street, and the window it gets seen through.
  • A dark interior looking through an angled window frame at a tall lit structure against a blue night sky. 01Civil Twilight
  • A grey hull with rows of lit windows seen from inside a dim room, the window mullion cutting across the view. 02Nautical Twilight
  • An orange lit window frame in the foreground, a dark vessel with scattered lit windows beyond it. 03Astronomical Twilight
  • A pale ornate tower against a deep blue night, seen through the same angled window. 04Terminator
  • A full moon above a lit structure, framed by a warm orange window surround. 05Syzygy
  • A distant pale tower in cold blue light, the quietest frame in the set. 06Apogee
  • A red glow rising from below a tower with lit windows, under a blue night sky. 07Earthshine
  • A streak of orange light crossing diagonally in front of a dark hull. 08Transit
  • A very dark frame, a few faint lit windows the only thing visible through the glass. 09Umbra

A residential tower is the slowest boat there is.