from: Gregory Eddi Jones <gejones@gmail.com>
to: David Campany <d@davidcampany.com>
date: Mar 6, 2023, 12:37 PM
subject: Commission?

David,

I’m interested in commissioning you for a 500-word essay about this new AI/collage project I previously shared with you. Do you have any interest, availability to do so?

The work embodies reflections and anxieties over how AI threatens traditional photographic heritage, a topic I figure you might be interested in exploring. AI picture engines come equipped with a metric ton of baggage to be unpacked. As the tools evolve further, it will only add to the pile. Who but you is better equipped to decode such complications? This project is my first attempt to rationalize this disruption in my own way. A visual essay with no end or beginning.

Here is a very casual presentation of the project I’ve drafted to share with NFT collectors. https://4923.io/. I’m currently speaking with Shane Lavalette of Assembly to represent the release of the NFT work.

This text would be a part of a much more formal, professionalized presentation on a new personal website I’m building, as well as to coincide with the release of the NFTs.

The future is weird, and the present likely more so.

Warm wishes,

Greg

from: David Campany <d@davidcampany.com>
to: Gregory Eddi Jones <gejones@gmail.com>
date: Mar 6, 2023, 1:00 PM
subject: Re: Commission?

Greg,

Thanks for your email and the very kind invitation. Your new project is certainly very interesting to me, as is the prospect of writing about it.

I feel this work needs an unorthodox approach, one that is somehow in keeping with the themes and modes of your exploration. Perhaps a text built from quotations, or words from an unexpected but suitable source that might work as both a response to your visuals and a parallel piece of thinking.

A text that might help a viewer to think about questions to do with prompts and protocols, originality and interpretation, acceptability and appropriateness. Maybe even a text that challenges the status, norms and assumptions of the writing, just as AI imagery might challenge the status, norms and assumptions of the visual arts. If you feel this kind of approach might work, let’s do it.

Agreed, the present certainly is weird. And it calls for weirdness.

All my best wishes,

David

from: Gregory Eddi Jones <gejones@gmail.com>
to: David Campany <d@davidcampany.com>
date: Mar 6, 2023, 1:04 PM
subject: Re: Commission?

Thanks David, yes fully agree on all fronts. I’d be foolish to ask of anything but your full freedom to approach it any way you see fit. Let me know what’s doable in terms of a timeline, and what you might need from me to help guide you through my own thinking on the work.

Of course, would be happy to have a call to converse on all this too if that would help.

My best,

Greg

from: David Campany <d@davidcampany.com>
to: Gregory Eddi Jones <gejones@gmail.com>
date: Mar 6, 2023, 1:29 PM
subject: Re: Commission?

Greg,

I have all I need, and more importantly I feel the work has all it needs, by which of course I mean the viewer of the work will have all they need.

Were I to ask you about your own thinking I might be tempted to reconvey those thoughts to the reader, and I’m not sure that ‘guiding’ them vicariously would be appropriate.

No timeline necessary: our 500-word text is done.

David