A $300 prize was given to the creator of the AI generated Theatre Dopera Spatial
Jason Allen, also known as “Sincarnate” on the communication platform Discord, made a post about his recent first place prize at a fine art competition while submitting his AI generated Theatre Dopera Spatial. The competition was held during the Colorado State Fair.
Allen is the president of the Colorado-based tabletop gaming company Incarnate Games. With the AI generated Theatre Dopera Spatial digital art piece done on canvas, Allen took first place in the state competition’s digital art category. Rather than creating it himself, Allen utilized an AI software called Midjourney to create the artwork and gave it prompts on its creation.
With regard to the artistic direction he gave to Midjourney, Allen addressed the topic within the Midjourney Discord server, acknowledging that his submission would be controversial but pointing out that those “who are against AI generated art are the first ones to throw the human under the bus by discrediting the human element.”
In a statement to VICE Motherboard, Allen mentioned a “special prompt” that he had used to produce hundreds of photographs. He then narrowed down the selection to the AI generated Theatre Dopera Spatial digital art piece that was submitted to the Colorado State Fair. According to Allen, he plans to release his prompts “at a later date.”
While Allen is quite pleased with the Theatre Dopera Spatial, he claims that it complies with all the contest’s guidelines and that he spent more than 80 hours working through 900 versions. Other artists on Twitter have different opinions, with one stating that it does not “bode well for the ‘human vs. AI’ illustration discussion” and that the judges were unaware that it was generated by AI.