for proven(AI)nce purposes only
3:1 panoramic scenes and stills (but make it opepen)
it's jan 2023 and "synthography" is becoming a thing on the TL
by feb i'm text-to-image prompting my brains out: surrealistic cinematic stills and scenes using Midjourney v4 prompt-structure techniques (learned on twitter) in Stable Diffusion. trying to tell stories in new ways
late march... i notice people prompting opepen in the feed:
cool, but i'll just be an enjoooyer and not get distracted from what i'm doing
until Jack Butcher posts a wide-angled one and something unlocks in my brain
come to find out it's "banner" size
but what i instantly see in my mind's eye is "cinematic...
what if i apply what I'm doing rn to opepen? how would that even work tho? how do you even get the opepen in there like that?"
this is April 2nd, 2023... evening time
probably prompt 1500 - 2000 imgs, early into the morning, using nounsAI
around 300 are worth saving to a folder
my approach?
prompt for the SCENE, not the opepen
let this evolving collection** serve, a year later (and beyond), as
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a living documentary on Base - using Zora to mint - about a marriage between the grammar of opepen and my love of synthography or, more popularly, "ai post-photography." over here we call it FAUXTOGRAPHY (with some p(ai)ntings thrown in)
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an exploration in translating a blurry scene in your head into (often) blurry images on the screen in front of you; massaging, iterating towards, and conjuring up the "impossible"... using text. along with the power of resisting that urge to make images perfect, even in post-production, "artifacts" being an important, expressive aspect of "turning noise into art". it's also important to note these early tools themselves, marking this (r)evolutionary moment in text-to-image generation***
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a time capsule of the largest portfolio of 3:1 aspect ratio opepen scenes, stills, and sequences originally posted on Twitter. part of the nounsAI lore when we all look back years from now...
🙏
...and creating a way for their earliest appreciatooors from April 3rd '23 - August 7th '24 (494 days) to collect what resonates most
** let's call any opepen-related "collection" i release before consensus is met on an opepen.art submitted set a PRESET — a timestamp of all work done during this period
*** original generations prompted with SD 1.5 via nounsAI (most created before the ControlNet/spiral viral craze we all remember so well)
NOTE: as a (literal) token of my appreciation for their early — and, in some cases, very vocal — enjoooying on the TL, i initially offered 25 collectors the choice to mint a 1/1. multiple pieces for the earliest of early. 20 took me up on it. "choose your favorite(s) and, as long as it's not already spoken for, it's yours." not being a fan of random "reveals," i wanted to make sure they got what actually resonated. some collectors also opted to mint the original generation as it came out of the model, even if the updated version was more "aesthetically pleasing.” something I didn't initially expect, but now makes a lot of sense. see details in each piece's description
"for proven(AI)nce purposes only" was born thanks to them and each OE collector. infinite salutes.
UPDATE (august '24): i've had a nagging feeling to close this chapter and tackle ideas i've had on my mind since i first started prompting opepen. the final push being zora's recent protocol change which no longer allows 1/1s. along with wanting to approach v3 of opepen.art differently from what you’ve seen from me up to now. coincidentally, in recent weeks, i offered collectors who missed out on the first round of mints to this PRESET the chance to collect what they previously had their eyes on. the final tally is 22 1/1 collectors (not including myself) across 37 pieces in “for proven(AI)nce purposes only”. dozens collecting the OE's. there is one remaining 1/1 up for grabs, yet to be collected as of this update (titled “man behind the projector”). and there may or may not be more OE's in here moving forward when appropriate. again, I’d like to give a big ty for hopping on this ride with me. i truly appreciate your appreciation, time, and attention