Prompt Battle

Although the production of synthetic images emerged recently as a popular creative phenomenon, the history of visual cultures is rich in examples of new technologies causing sudden changes in the production of images, capable of changing the zeitgeist of an era. From small-format cameras to Polaroids, to the current ubiquity of digital eyes and their editing and publishing tools, it seems to be ever easier and cheaper to generate images of the world.

With the advent of what is being referred to as promptism—that is, the ability to write suitable instructions for an automatic visual agent—another turning point has been reached: the photographic documentation of reality and its corresponding race to resolution are being replaced by the quasi-magical spells of AI. It does this by means of hyper-fast processes of trial and error, giving rise to endless permutations generated from massive data sets of an almost clandestine visual culture that is impossible to unravel. The battle will be preceded by a talk by Sebastian Schmieg, one of the developers of this format, who will be reflecting on the drift of the synthetic image.

The prompt battle is a format developed by Florian A. Schmidt and Sebastian Schmieg with a team of design students at HTW Dresden (Bernadette Geiger, Ella Zickerick, Emily Krause, Levi Stein, Lina Schwarzenberg, Robert Hellwig).

A joint initiative of the CCCB and the DONE programme of Fundació Foto Colectania.