Jeff,
I read your work on promptism (or, at least, one of your works; you can be sure I'll be reading more in the near future) and I'm not sure that this is quite the same.
As you have it in this piece, promptism is something along the lines of a nascent artistic movement that focuses on the technical skill of manipulating prompts to achieve a vision. It sounds great - and incidentally is why I happen to agree with the selection of Theatre d'Opera Spatial as a winner in the art competition at the Colorado State Fair. It seems clear to me that the artist had a vision that they were trying to actualize (which likely evolved in tandem with his use of Midjourney to explore the theme) and that he went to great detail to use his chosen tool (the prompt) to craft and perfect a vision.
Nothing in here is on that level of rigor. I certainly am interested in the abstract philosophy of prompts but I am more interested in how they are derived form an understanding of natural, human creativity, and how they give us a new language for understanding creative principles.
The notion of iteration, along with the notion of seed and prompt colliding, for example, is an invitation to re-think the cyclical nature of creativity. I have heard it expressed elsewhere as a creative "loop" - where a creator (like a sculptor) makes a change to a medium (like marble) and the medium then contains new information in the form of a rough approximation of the artist's vision. When the artist returns to the medium later (even if only a second or three) the newly altered medium communicates that information back to the author and serves as a basis for the author's next round of alterations to bring it in line with their high-level vision.
That distinction between vision and actualization is fascinating to me. If a whittler wants to carve a turtle, the end result will be different depending on the exact knot of wood he starts with. The notion of "seed and prompt" brings this distinction home in a powerful new way that is now immediately visible and intuitive to people thanks to MidJourney. It's a new language for describing old creative processes.
Not quite promptism - although perhaps I misunderstand your use of the term. But in all other regards this piece is certainly a celebration of prompts.
J
