Grand Exhibition of Prompts, a Netprov

Submitter: Rob Wittig, U of Bergen, and Mark C. Marino, U of Southern California

——————————————————

The experiment:

We invited students to play a netprov called the Grand Exhibition of Prompts. Netprov is networked, improvised literature, in which writers collaborate — role-playing in real time on a digital platform — to create sophisticated narratives. We used Discord. Other platforms work fine. In our invitation (link below) we encourage writers to do a little experimentation with AI image generation, but not to focus on the images.

“On the other hand” we wrote “we are entranced by the words folks use in their prompts to describe what they want to see! These prompts are strange, powerful, revelatory. Using phrases, fragments, and lists sprinkled with lumps of aesthetic and technical jargon, aspiring artists are writing short texts of startling depth and impact. Help us explore and celebrate prompts as literature! Come and write prompts with us! Join a community of prompt artists where you can collaborate and play! Join an art movement! Start an art movement! Then enter your best prompt into the Grand Exhibition!” Using the historic parallel to the storied Paris art salons of the 19th century writers: 1) created and introduced their artist role-play characters; 2) wrote prompts (often with the goal of expressing things the AI cannot illustrate); 3) shared writing process observations in the prompt artist communities, and 4) supported other writers’ work through comments and encouragements.

“AI images are but the stepping stones to writing more beautiful prompts.” – Hans Paedeweyder

Results:

Students loved this assignment! Newcomers are introduced to image generation AI, and more advanced students begin to see its pitfalls. This is a great moment to discuss cultural database bias, environmental costs of AI, economic accessibility, and other issues. (It would be wonderful to partner a writing teacher with an art history teacher on this project.) Three art movements arose in our experiment: Emo (revealing inner turmoil), Retro (love of the past, real & imagined, sincere or ironic), Fido (pets and how incredibly cute they are).

Once writers launched into composing prompts, the only struggle was to keep them focused on the words, rather than the resultant images. The fact that when we did our first run MidJourney only allowed 10 free images in Discord before requiring a paid subscription was actually a great help. Students enjoyed inventing a fictional artist who was preparing for this stressful salon. It allowed them some fictional distance to discuss their own creative process and anxieties in a safe, supportive space. Not all of them used the prompts as their characters’ expressions rather than their own, but that didn’t matter. Again, a teachable moment for advanced students. Our great satisfaction was to see writers composing intense, short, strong, expressive texts using experimental forms — accessing their own most effective language — without too much mimicking of existing literary forms. Surprise! You’ve been writing poetry!

Relevant resources:

• Full assignment: https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/collections/textgened/creative-explorations/the-grand-exhibition-of-prompts/
• More on netprov, including numerous assignments: Netprov, Networked Improvised Literature for the Classroom and Beyond, Rob Wittig https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12387128
• Excellent (and hilarious) book to teach AI writing from: Hallucinate This! An authoritized autobiography of ChatGPT, as prompted by Mark C. Marino https://markcmarino.com/chatgpt/

Contact: rwittig[AT]d[DOT]umn[DOT]edu