Midjourney Killed the Photoshop Star: Assembling the Emerging Field of Synthography

Abstract

With the release of artificial intelligence image-generation platforms to the broader public in 2022, there is an opportunity to evaluate how image-making practices may change and speculate how graphic design software, such as Photoshop, may evolve. Using a methodology of assemblage, a relational study of Photoshop and Midjourney is gathered to produce a synthetic ethnography of these agentic forces within the larger synthographic assemblage. Outputs and practices of using these two software platforms are offered to see contrasts and continuities to understand the collaborative impacts to postdigital art and education using software agents. Consideration for these computational cofigurations counteract false narratives of the new and offer creatives, educators, and learners within this social ontology grounds for ethical praxis while maintaining a relational understanding of postdigital creative expression.

Acknowledgment

I thank the faculty in the University of Bergen’s Digital Culture program for their support of the research needed for this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Synthography combines synthesis, or putting together, and -graphy, as a form of writing or description.

2 Discord is a social media software program that organizes user communities on servers. These servers are managed by organization interest groups or corporations and provide threaded discussion in the form of multimedia message boards. Midjourney runs such a server and has enabled users to submit prompts to their AI image-generation model.

3 I am using the term translation to reference a relational effect between two or more actants similar to actor–network theory (Brown & Capdevila, 1999; Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005). Essentially, translation is interaction that is conceived through the co-constitution of human and nonhuman forces, and in my argumentation the durability of a translation suggests significance.

4 I first wrote about cofiguration attempting to theorize our embodied relationship with geolocation technologies (Knochel, 2017), but here I am using it more broadly to refer to subject formation within the comingling of human and nonhuman agencies.

5 GUI refers to graphical user interface and is pronounced “gooey.”

6 Specifically, 9 articles from Visual Arts Research, 4 articles from Studies in Art Education, 9 articles from Art Education, 9 articles from Arts & Activities, and 10 articles from SchoolArts.

7 Unless otherwise noted, Google search scrapes capture search ranking, title, description, and website address.

8 The search was restricted to publications since March 2013. Articles were in the following distribution: 22 in Art Education, 15 in International Journal of Education Through Art, 8 in International Journal of Art & Design Education, 7 in Visual Arts Research, 6 in Studies in Art Education, 5 in Visual Inquiry, 1 in Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, 1 in Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, and 1 in International Journal of Arts Education.

9 See Golan Levin’s (2021) discussion about interpolation in computer art for more about interpolation as both a subject and technique.

10 While the forbidden word list is not made publicly available, there are community-compiled lists (see Heidorn, 2023).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Norway Fulbright Foundation through the Fulbright Scholars Program for the academic year 2022–2023.