Crafting a Prompt
It’s funny how words get usurped. We talked about drone music long before the word “drone” came to be associated with small flying objects. And in the Disquiet Junto, we used the term “prompt” to refer to creative composition concepts for individual and collaborative music-making projects for a decade before the term became widely associated with engaging a nascent artificial intelligence to respond with some desired output. But the older meanings linger, especially in communities and scenes where a definition is baked into the lingua franca. In such realms, the earlier meaning can still evolve in its own way, even when the newer meaning gains prominence. On the discussion board llllllll.co (aka Lines), where a lot of Disquiet Junto community discussion takes place, someone raised the topic of a visual equivalent to the Disquiet Junto — that is, weekly composition prompts aimed at visual artists, rather than at musicians. In the resulting (and ongoing) conversation, a longtime Lines and Junto participant, Jason Wehmhoener, made a comment about the development of prompts, the substance of which I appreciated:
I think there’s more to be said about building a community around creative prompts. I’ve attempted, privately, to build up a backlog of weekly prompt ideas for visual arts, and I’ve spoken with @disquiet at length about what makes a good prompt, and I have to say, I personally found the task to be an immense challenge. One of the things Marc really emphasizes in his prompts is accessibility. He takes care to make prompts that don’t necessarily require specialized skill, or prior experience. There’s a very zen like beginners mind approach to the Junto, an aspect of the experience that I think may be under appreciated. I think it explains a lot of the Junto’s success. Anybody can jump in anytime. And yet it’s always engaging and often surprising.
It’s often the case that I learn the most about the Junto not just by watching people participate and listening to their work, but also by witnessing what participants themselves say about the Junto: how they describe it, how they position it, what stands out to them. The language they use is often language I later adopt myself.
