Art workshops with Szymon Pruciak

The Faculty of Fine Arts invites you to a workshop on cyanotype printing supported by new AI generative graphics technologies. The classes will be held on 8 December from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the building at 121 Mickiewicza Street and will be led by Szymon Pruciak, a lecturer at the American University of Cyprus.

These practical workshops introduce students to a hybrid work process that combines contemporary image generation by artificial intelligence with one of the oldest processes of photographic printing: cyanotype. Drawing on themes of reimagining historical archives and decolonising visual narratives, students will learn how to create AI-generated images that can be converted into high-quality digital negatives suitable for analogue printing.

The session will begin with a guide to prompting strategies that avoid Orientalist or colonial tropes, encouraging participants to develop images that are sensitive to place, culture, and historical context. Students will generate a series of AI images, refine them according to conceptual goals, and prepare them for printing as calibrated digital negatives using accessible software such as Photoshop or specialised negative creation tools.

In the second part of the workshop, students will learn practical techniques of the cyanotype process – coating paper, exposing it to UV light and rinsing it to obtain prints in Prussian blue. The emphasis is on the materiality of early photographic chemistry and how digital images gain new meaning when converted into analogue form.

At the end of the workshop, students will have ready-made negatives generated by artificial intelligence and ready-made cyanotype prints, giving them insight into the creative and critical potential of combining historical processes with contemporary digital tools.

In connection with Szymon Pruciak's visit to NCU, an exhibition of his works will also be held at Galeria 9.39. The vernissage will take place on 11 December at 12:00 noon, and the exhibition will be open until the end of January 2026.

The event will be held in Polish.