Local Diffusion
The official call for the Workshop
Is it possible to create a graphic novel with generative A.I.? What does it mean to use these emerging media in collaboration with others? And why does their local and offline application matter?
With AI becoming more and more democratised and GPT-like Structures increasingly integrated into everyday life, the black-box notion of the mysterious all-powerful Intelligence hinders insightful and effective usage of emerging tools. One particularly hands-on example is AI generated images. Within the proposed Workshop, we will dive into Explainable AI, explore Stable Diffusion, and most importantly, understand the most important parameters within it. We want to steer outcomes in a deliberate manner. Emphasis here is on open and accessible technology, to increase user agency and make techno-social dependencies and power relations visible.
Empower yourself against readymade technology! Do not let others decide on what your best practices are. Get involved in the modification of the algorithm and get surprised by endless creative possibilities. Through creating a short graphic novel with 4-8 panels, participants will be able to utilise multiple flavours of the Stable Diffusion algorithm, and will have a non-mathematical understanding of the parameters and their effects on the output within some common GUIs. They will be able to apply several post-processing techniques to their generated images, such as upscaling, masking, inpainting and pose redrawing. Further, participants will be able to understand the structure of a good text prompt, be able to utilise online reference databases and manipulate parameters and directives of the Image to optimise desired qualities. Participants will also be introduced to ControlNet, enabling them to direct Pose and Image composition in detail.
Workshop Evaluation
Over the course of 3 hours, I gave an introductory workshop in local stable diffusion processing and introduced participants to the server available to UdK Students for fast remote computation that circumvents the unethicality of continuously using a proprietary cloud service for similar outputs. There is not much we can do on the data production side and many ethical dilemmas surrounding digital colonialism remain, but local computation takes one step towards a critical and transparent use of AI tools by Artists.
The Workshop format was rathert open and experimental, which was welcomed by the participants and they tried the collages enthusiastically. We also had a refreshing discussion on different positions regarding the ethicalities and whether a complete block of these tools is called for and feasible.
I am looking forward to round 2 with the next iteration, where we are definitely diving deeper into the depths of comfyui, an interface that i absolutely adore, while its power also terrifies me sometimes.
