arthistoricum.net

The Slow Down Time project is an aesthetic and technical investigation of the procedural outcomes of generative AI routines as both standalone works of visual culture and mechanical biproducts of large language models (LLM). As an exercise in new media curation, the assemblage operates as both a performative and conceptual response to LLM black-box processes in the form of a slow-media / slow-synthesis art intervention. The archive documents the dialogue between the text-to-image service Midjourney, a network of twenty-three prompt authors and the curator, Mitch Goodwin (aka The Prompt Wrangler). An intentionally meditative process that catalogues fragments of data and dialogue – via email, the written word and printed copies (sent by global postal systems) – enabling contemplation within latent diffusion spaces. The curatorial process for Slow Down Time archive was also an exercise in transparency, with the inclusion of the Discord data for the original instance of every image. This openness not only exposes each image’s genealogy, but also makes possible the “creation” of further generations beyond the archive. Capturing and preserving the stylistic and technical developments of the Midjourney “house style” over a specific period of time (August 2022 - May 2023) was also an important goal of the project.