Art

World’s first AI art award ignites debate about what is photography

Published

1 year ago

October 8, 2023

Swedish artist Annika Nordenskiöld has won the world’s first artificial intelligence art award at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale with a life-like image of sisters cuddling an octopus, which she created using computer prompts.

Twin Sisters in Love (2023) by Annika Nordenskiöld.CREDIT:BALLARAT INTERNATIONAL FOTO BIENNALE

Accepting the $2000 first prize on Sunday from Sweden for the winning image Twin Sisters in Love (2023), Nordenskiöld said: “I understand the fear of AI and find it somewhat healthy. But I see it more like a colleague I am working with.”

“None of these places, people or creatures exist in the physical realm,” said the artist who recently had an exhibition of her work in Stockholm called We don’t exist, and is about to publish her third book using text prompts to create photo-like images.

“Many people say my pictures make them uncomfortable … When I explain that AI creates them as a kind of collage… many laugh, others are distressed and find them disgusting,” she said of the pictures she has created using the AI program Midjourney.

The organisers of the Ballarat festival hope the inaugural AI prize, Prompted Peculiar, a world first for an international photography festival, will open debate about the difference between photography and what they call “promptography.”

The term was coined this year when German photographer and judge at the Ballarat festival Boris Eldagsen turned down first prize in the creative open category of the Sony World Photography Awards because his image “The Electrician” was generated by AI, and in his words, was “not photography”.

Photographer Boris Eldagsen (left) and the image he created using AI, “The Electrician.”CREDIT:BORIS ELDAGSEN

“At the time, I was considered a fire starter in the photography world in opening up this conversation on ‘promptography’, but now I am seen as the Che Guevara of analogue photographers and how we approach the elephant in the room – AI-generated images,” he said.

“Now the default position for when you look at pictures online will be to assume they are artificially generated – rarely are they fact-checked … which presents a problem for picture editors, photographers, developers, AI experts and social media consumers the world over.”

Eldagsen, who was joined on the judging panel by Una Rey, editor of Artlink magazine and Ballarat International Foto Biennale CEO Vanessa Gerrans, says an international roundtable conversation on photography is needed.

“A photographer goes out into the world and shoots what they see by chance in a certain place, but nowadays, a ‘promptographer’ can stay in a darkened room and create a computer-generated image. Seeing is no longer believing it is real,” he said.

He suggested a code of ethics for photographers with perhaps watermarks to ensure authenticity of photos may be necessary.

With photography co-ops like Magnum, and lawyers the world over seeking to clarify copyright laws of photographed material, his fellow judge, Gerrans said they were concerned about the potential to create disinformation.

“There are clearly unresolved issues around moral rights and consent, these are the conversations we need to start having so we can make sure we’re primed and acting ethically and responsibly,” Gerrans said.

As new technology impacts visual culture, Prompted Peculiar is an invitation to debate where this
new art of “promptography” belongs, she said at the end of a weekend of public forums in Ballarat, which covered these topics.

Lawyer Alana Kushnir, who helped work out the terms and conditions of the competition which attracted entries from all over the world, said it was a courageous move on behalf of a photography festival to engage with AI.

“We don’t have much guidance when it comes to the law in this space. We had to ask ourselves from an art history position, what is the difference between a photo and an image.

“There are parallels to when the camera was first invented – artists felt threatened. It will take time for the terms around IT and AI to align better,” Kushnir said.

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Art

40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

Published

1 day ago

November 3, 2024

Harry Miller

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate Cracked.com

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Art

John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

Published

5 days ago

October 31, 2024

Harry Miller

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 CBC.ca

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Art

A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

Published

1 month ago

September 26, 2024

Anne Joseph

LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

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