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Joseph Nathan Cohen

Sociologist at Queens College in the City University of New York

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Dada

How generative AI renders Dada: thin and thick prompts compared across two subjects.

AI Art Styles

This entry documents how a generative image model rendered Dada when the movement was named in a prompt. It forms part of a survey of 60 art movements generated in February 2024.

The images

Two subjects are held constant across the series: Lake Kenogamissi in Northern Ontario, and Times Square in New York City. Each is rendered twice. A thin prompt names the movement and nothing else. A thick prompt supplies a generated description of the movement’s visual characteristics.

Lake Kenogamissi
Dada, Lake Kenogamissi, thin prompt
Thin prompt
Dada, Lake Kenogamissi, thick prompt
Thick prompt
Times Square
Dada, Times Square, thin prompt
Thin prompt
Dada, Times Square, thick prompt
Thick prompt

The thick descriptor

The following description was generated by GPT-4 and supplied to the image model as the thick prompt.

Dada art, an early 20th-century avant-garde movement, is distinguished by its rejection of reason and logic, manifested in visual expressions of nonsense and irrationality. This anti-establishment art form often uses collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculptures, frequently embodying a spirit of protest. To create Dada-inspired art, experiment with mixed media, allow for spontaneity, and be willing to defy traditional artistic concepts and societal norms.

About this movement

Background on Dada is available at its Wikipedia entry. The images above are not offered as an account of Dada as art historians understand it. They record what a commercial image model produced when asked for the style by name.

About this series

This entry is part of a survey, described in the series introduction. The full set of 60 movements is browsable in the Art Styles index. The survey used text-to-image generation, in which composition varies alongside the style itself.

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Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College, CUNY. Writes about household finance, culture, and the tools social scientists use to measure economic life.