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A camera for ideas — Steph Ango

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Emerging generative AI art tools such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E and Midjourney have given rise to a new artform. I call it synthography. A revolutionary new kind of camera was recently invented. Instead of turning light into pictures, it turns ideas into pictures. The traditional camera replicates what your eyes do. It works by receiving millions of photons onto a light-sensitive material, processed into a kind of picture we call a photograph (from Greek roots meaning a “light drawing”). This new kind of camera replicates what your imagination does. It receives words and then synthesizes a picture from its experience seeing millions of other pictures. The output doesn’t have a name yet, but I’ll call it a synthograph (meaning synthetic drawing). Both kinds of cameras are tools that help us convert moments into pictures. Pictures are powerful because they can be shared across time, space, and language barriers. Pictures allow you to travel back in time and see what someone else saw, a

Emerging generative AI art tools such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E and Midjourney have given rise to a new artform. I call it synthography. A revolutionary new kind of camera was recently invented. Instead of turning light into pictures, it turns ideas into pictures. The traditional camera replicates what your eyes do. It works by receiving millions of photons onto a light-sensitive material, processed into a kind of picture we call a photograph (from Greek roots meaning a “light drawing”). This new kind of camera replicates what your imagination does. It receives words and then synthesizes a p

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