A text-to-image 'Stapler filled with blueberries'
Staple Diffusion with a "P"schaw?
August 2022
August 2022
The program Stable Diffusion, not “Staple Diffusion”, is the latest in generative text-to-image algorithms. It was released into the wild in August 2022, and it quickly overran OpenAI’s ‘Dall-e 2’ and Google’s ‘ImageGen’ in both image quality and accessibility. As with the pen plotter, digital photography, or the 3D printer, the perpetual question arises whenever a new artmaking tool is invented: “will new tool X be the end of a traditional art practice or the beginning of a whole new one?” In August 2022, I made a zine titled "Staple Diffusion" to explore the toll of new tech on old tech.
Some organized staples
Some reorganized staples
In a lot of ways this new AI image maker is like a stapler: you get out what you put in. With a stapler, a blade drives a staple through a slot, slicing through paper and folding against an anvil. Now load your Swingline with blueberries. For AI, all the biases present in the training data sets get transformed into the final output.
One of many "Ancient Greek Bust" generated by AI
For example, I type in “Ancient Greek Bust” and get male, white sculptural imagery. I need to prompt engineer ‘female’ in to overcome the gender bias. We also know the ancient Greeks painted the marble in bright colors, as shown in Chroma, a recent show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The whiteness in these sculptures is actually an artifact of their passage into a more modern era, and the whiteness is not easily prompted to historical reconstructions.
Zine cover with staples fading into the sky
Try as we might prompting and re-prompting, at like a nickel per image, Stable Diffusion creations are fractional pennies per megabyte to make and store. Similarly, staples are inexpensive, like a hundredth of a cent. So, a 200-staple image using “Staple Diffusion” is cost-competitive with Stable Diffusion. I bet If you asked an AI a year or so from now to combine the two, staple and stable diffusion, into a dialogue about art creation full of bad jokes and tired ideas, you would churn out something like my Staple Diffusion zine (or something better).
Staple Diffusion in progress
Still, these new AI tools are mind-blowingly good at making “a wood cut bison” or a million fantastical dystopian landscapes in the style of your favorite artist. For me, it’s just another tool on the screen…for now…until it becomes a staple…