"Why do humans create images? Explore the world of visual art, and build a gallery made from all ages of human creativity." ― Information Tab
The Power of Images is a limited time event which focuses on Visual Art. It features 12 generators and 52 upgrades that produce Creativity 
as their currency.
Story[]
Opening[]
"Throughout history, humans have created images. Are they a tool for communication? A way of sharing ideas and values? A means to create a legacy? What purpose do images serve?"
Ending[]
"There seems to be no absolute answer to why humans create images. Tools and techniques change, but the drive toward visual expression seems to be part of the human condition. In a way, my simulations are also visual art. Maybe this makes me an artist, too."
Objectives & Rewards[]
The requirements that have to be completed in order to get all rewards.
Explore Visual Art (12 Requirements)
- Collect 5 Line → 1
- Collect 10 Symbol → 2
- Collect 5 Composition → 3
- Collect 3 Renaissance → A Mirror on Reality Badge
- Collect 5 Photography, 3 Modernism → 4
- Collect Cubism, Museum → 6
- Collect Tricking the Eye → 7
- Collect 10 Post Modernism → Critical Lens Badge
- Collect Pop Art, Moving Images, Advertising → 8
- Collect 15 Digital Revolution, 10 Mass Creation, Meme → 9
- Collect AI Imagery, Anti AI Imagery → 10
- Collect Meaning, Legacy → Everyday Artist Badge
Badges[]
This exploration holds some rewards already mentioned above. The main ones being these three badges: Bronze: A Mirror on Reality, Silver: Critical Lens and Gold: Everyday Artist which have an effect on all other evolutionary branches, speeding up every simulation by 1%, and also speeding up production in future The Power of Images simulations by 5, 10 and 15% respectively.
A Mirror on Reality[]
"Paintings reflect the aspirations and truths of the artists and cultures that create them."
Critical Lens[]
"Visual art can do more than represent reality. It can ask questions and comment on the medium of art itself."
Everyday Artist[]
"With tools for creation at their fingertips, anyone with an idea communicate it visually and share it globally through the internet."
Generators[]
The The Power of Images event features 12 generators which produce the event currency Creativity .
Creativity[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Base Cost | Base Production | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Line | An image begins with a simple act, like a mark scraped into a rock, a painted hand pressed against a wall, or a line drawn into the sand. Mastering mark-making is the most basic of artistic skills and is a first step for human creativity. | 40
|
1/sec
|
Imagination |
|
Symbol | Humans took further steps in drawing the intangible, wanting to depict concepts such as the future or the afterlife. They created abstract shapes and objects that represent these ideas. | 7,500
|
50/sec
|
Drawing |
|
Composition | As cultures became more complex, so did their imagery. Artists increasingly made conscious visual choices in their work, considering where subjects should be placed and telling an overall story. | 2.5e6
|
2,000/sec
|
Brush Strokes |
|
Renaissance | Italian masters such as Raphael found inspiration in the idealized quality of Greco-Roman art. At the same time, their use of perspective and shadow enabled them to depict depth in otherwise flat paintings. | 6.25e8
|
500,000/sec
|
Greece and Rome Church as King |
|
Photography | By coating paper in silver salts and exposing it to daylight through a lens, Joseph Niépce created the first photographs. These images would vanish when brought outside, and it would take a decade to achieve a permanent effect. | 1.5e11
|
5e7/sec
|
The First Projection Realism |
|
Modernism | The advent of photography plunged painters into a crisis of purpose. No longer needed to provide realistic portraits, many shifted toward a strict, abstract, "Modern" approach using only flat shapes and colors. | 4e13
|
5e9/sec
|
Realism Post Impressionism Photography |
|
Art Celebrity | Picasso. Kahlo. Pollock. These aren't just the names of artists - they're brands. Their names are known far beyond gallery or museum walls and have become synonymous with artistic genius. | 1e16
|
3e12/sec
|
Museum Artist Entrepreneur |
|
Post Modernism | While Modernism adhered to strict boundaries, Post-Modern artists deprioritized rules and definitions, employing diverse collages and recontextualizing objects from sources other than paintings. | 5e17
|
9e13/sec
|
Cubism Art Celebrity Abstract Expressionism |
|
Moving Images | When a series of photographs is presented in sequence, it can simulate motion. Works like "A Trip to the Moon" were among the first to use this method to tell a story, creating the first narrative films. | 1.5e20
|
8e15/sec
|
Tricking the Eye |
|
Mass Appeal | No longer just an art form, images have become a business. As people look for new ways to consume art, product makers try to appeal to the masses. An image can be cute, cool, or beautiful, but above all it must sell. | 7e22
|
3e18/sec
|
Surrealism Pop Art Feminist Art |
|
Digital Revolution | When art can be done on a screen, artists again must adapt. Some continue to work traditionally, while others take advantage of the technology, creating art with more ease than ever but at the cost of materiality. | 1e26
|
7e21/sec
|
Video Art Computer Animation |
|
Mass Creation | Amid the boredom and anxieties of the modern age, more people are sharing art than ever before. Still, feedback can snowball, blurring the line between creator and audience while making artistic meaning a large-scale debate. | 2e28
|
2e24/sec
|
Mass Appeal Post Pop Art Internet |
Upgrades[]
Line Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Imagination | At some point, early hominids started imagining things beyond the world in front of them. This evolution towards creating might be what began the journey of becoming human. | 20
|
100% | - |
|
Drawing | As the initial stroke is joined by others, an image begins to form— a constellation of stars, an animal taken down in a hunt, a deceased leader's journey to the underworld. | 100
|
200% | Line |
|
Body Paint | As humans advanced, they began creating marks and patterns on their bodies. Evidence of body decoration dates back to the Neanderthals, who used natural materials like red iron oxide and manganese as body paint. | 400
|
150% | Line |
Symbol Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Tattoo | Otzi the Iceman was a frozen mummy found with 62 tattoos. At 5,300 years old, his are the oldest known permanent body markings. Located in areas associated with joint pain, they likely served a medicinal purpose. | 30,000
|
150% | Body Paint Symbol |
|
Glyphs | Ancient Chinese oracle bones and shells were used in divination to determine the outcome of politics, crops, and hunts. They were written in a pictographic script that is ancestral to all subsequent forms of Chinese writing. | 150,000
|
100% | Symbol |
|
Brush Strokes | Believed to have originated in China, calligraphy elevated written language from a pratical endeavor into an art form that required mastery over paintbrushes and pens. | 800,000
|
100% | Glyphs |
Composition Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Ancient Art | In both the Egyptian Old Kingdom and Ancient Babylon, art began to adopt a political dimension. It focused on the image of the king, stressing his role in sustaining the religious and sociopolitical orders. | 3.2e6
|
100% | Composition |
|
Folk Art | A culture is defined by the stories it tells to explain its world, and how these tales are depicted reflects that society's values. The flags of Ghanaian Asafo people express proverbs featuring symbols of power. | 1.2e7
|
100% | Composition |
|
Greece and Rome | Sold across the Mediterranean, Greek red-figure vases featured idealized paintings of gods and heroes. Occasionally signed by their creators, they made for history's oldest form of branding. | 5e7
|
100% | Ancient Art |
|
Church as King | Europe's wealthiest institution was also its leading artistic patron, needing masterpieces to fill its grand cathedrals. From Leonardo to Raphael, many of Europe's greatest artists worked under the Church's direction. | 2e8
|
100% | Folk Art |
|
The First Projection | A camera obscura is a dark room or box, lit only by a small hole or lens on one wall. This setup allows for an image outside the room to be projected on a wall inside. By the 16th century, it was being used as an aid to drawing. | 8e8
|
100% | Renaissance |
Renaissance Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Artisans | In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, artists were viewed more as craftsmen than creators. They produced their work on demand, often in organized workshops, fulfilling the vision of whoever commissioned each piece. | 2e9
|
100% | Church as King |
|
Patrons | As merchants and bankers were enriched by global trade, the Church lost its near monopoly over the arts. Wealthy nobles and private citizens wanted their likenesses preserved on a canvas, and were more than willing to pay the fee. | 8e9
|
100% | Church as King |
|
Romanticism | A product of the early 1800's, Romanticism emphasized the individual, often isolated from society. The Romantics evoked awe and wonder in their artwork, employing dramatic landscapes and depicting intense emotional states. | 3.25e10
|
100% | Renaissance |
|
Realism | Where the Romantics idolized anti-heroes and nonconformists, 19th century Realists depicted the everyday struggles of ordinary people. They paved the way for later artistic explorations of social and political themes. | 1.25e11
|
100% | Romanticism |
|
Impressionism | In the late 1860s, artists left the studio to paint on location using short, quick brushstrokes and vibrant colors to create dreamlike impressions of reality. Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" inadvertantly named the movement. | 5e11
|
100% | Renaissance |
|
Post Impressionism | As Impressionism became part of the establishment, later artists like Van Gogh drew on its innovations, maintaining its use of vibrant colors, but with an eye to self-expression and more abstract techniques and styles. | 2e12
|
400% | Impressionism |
Photography Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Memory as an Object | In 1839, Niépce reduced exposure times from a minimum of eight hours to a few seconds. This led to the invention of the negative, allowing photographers to make multiple prints of their photos. | 1e12
|
1000% | Photography |
|
Tricking the Eye | The phenakistoscope was invented simultaneously in both Belgium and Austria. Created in 1833, this device spun while displaying a sequence of images on the edge of a disc, creating the illusion of movement. | 1.5e16
|
100000% | Memory as an Object |
Modernism Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Expressionism | While earlier artistic movements tried to depict reality, late 19th century Expressionists aimed to examine psychological states. They used distortion, exaggeration, and bold colors to show their anxieties to the world. | 5e13
|
100% | Modernism |
|
Artist Entrepreneur | As artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer were in high demand, they could negotiate higher prices for their work. This marked the first time the artist was no longer subject to a patron, but could make their own success. | 2e14
|
125% | Patrons Artisans |
|
Cubism | Inspired by African art and the cross-pollination of art forms, cubism seeks to show multiple perspectives unified in one image. It uses flat geometric shapes to depict a three-dimensional reality. | 8e14
|
100% | Modernism |
|
Museum | The work of historians and curators can turn an artist or body of work into a cultural artifact. They are part of a large machine that can bring images into the mainstream or leave them to be forgotten. | 3e15
|
100% | Patrons |
|
Abstract Expressionism | A product of the New York art scene, the Abstract Expressionists favored shapes, patterns, and splashes of color. They rejected the desire to reflect reality, focusing on the bodily movement involved in making a painting. | 6e17
|
900% | Modernism |
Art Celebrity Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Critic | As it can be difficult to break into the art world, artists often depend on others to promote their work. Critics hold influence over large audiences that can make or break an artist's career. | 5e16
|
250% | Art Celebrity |
|
Dealer | Before the 19th century, artists dealt directly with collectors and patrons. In the newer large ecosystem, the dealer emerged to serve as long-term partners for artists, launching their careers and organizing exhibits. | 8e19
|
15000% | Art Celebrity |
Post Modernism Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Dadaism | Devastated by World War I, post-war artists saw only insanity in the world around them. They attempted to reboot the concept of art, emphasizing nonsense over beauty to reflect a traumatized vision of the human condition. | 2e18
|
250% | Post Modernism |
|
Surrealism | Between the World Wars, the Surrealists explored the mind's inner workings. Influenced by Freud, their disturbing and even violent art depicted the human unconscious with symbolic imagery and unexpected juxtapositions. | 1.5e19
|
200% | Dadaism |
|
Pop Art | Inspired by the commodity-driven values of postwar society, Pop Art criticized consumerism while elevating popular culture to the status of fine art. Some artists even turned themselves into pop-culture icons in the process. | 5e20
|
2000% | Surrealism |
|
Feminist Art | Female creators have been historically unrepresented in the art world. Feminist artists like Barbara Kruger sought to challenge this standard, using bold typography to criticize the patriarchal status quo. | 1.5e23
|
20000% | Pop Art |
Moving Images Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Hand-Drawn Animation | Emile Cohl drew over 700 individual images to create the first animated cartoon, "Fantasmagorie." When presented in sequence, the drawings simulated movement for just under two minutes. | 3e21
|
300% | Moving Images |
|
Silent to Talkie | As early films lacked audio, exagerrated body language was used to convey characters' emotions and interactions. 'Talkies' revolutionized movie-making in the 1920s, introducing synchronized dialogue and sound effects. | 8e21
|
500% | Moving Images |
|
Grayscale to Color | While not the first film to use color, "The Wizard of Oz" enchanted audiences with its visual approach, contrasting the black-and-white mundane reality of Kansas with a vibrantly technicolor fantasy world. | 4e22
|
300% | Silent to Talkie |
|
Video Art | Nam June Paik was a unique artist, showing his work on screens instead of canvases and using magnets to warp the images he produced. Audiences praised his immersive technique, labeling him a pioneer of a new type of art. | 1e25
|
30000% | Grayscale to Color |
|
Computer Animation | Thousands of drawings sometimes amount to just a few minutes of footage. Computer programs speed up this process, allowing for the same methods with fewer materials and offering new abilities like onion skinning. | 1e26
|
150% | Hand-Drawn Animation |
Mass Appeal Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Advertising | Products rely on visual imagery to appeal to as many customers as they can. As they use a celebrity's image, a recognizable logo, or an idealized presentation of the product, imagery becomes the art of manipulation. | 1.5e24
|
100% | Mass Appeal |
|
Comics | Sequentially placed images can tell a story, and when spread over multiple panels on a page they become a comic. They may have originated in short newspaper strips, but some comics have become iconic in pop culture. | 2e24
|
200% | Mass Appeal |
|
Post Pop Art | As fine arts grew more conceptual, it became less palatable for ordinary people. Pop art turned this on its head with an embrace of mass culture. Post pop artists like Jeff Koons continued this push toward an aesthetic focus. | 6e24
|
300% | Advertising |
Digital Revolution Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
New Media Art | A catch-all category of art designed and produced with electronic technologies, New Media Art spans from the virtual ecosystems of Ian Cheng to the post-conceptual installations of Cory Archangel. | 4e26
|
200% | Digital Revolution |
|
Digital Art | With the proliferation of personal devices and apps, anyone can create visual art. Whether photoshopping an image, editing a video, or applying a filter on a photo, computers have brought art creation into everyday life. | 1e27
|
200% | New Media Art |
|
Internet | In connecting billions of computers across the world, the internet established a new avenue for sharing art. Images could now be shared on a global scale, reaching both large populations and smaller sub-cultures. | 8e27
|
100% | Digital Revolution |
|
Algorithmic Art | Artists can use mathematical rulesets to create their art. This work tends to be pattern-based and is often done in collaboration with computers due to the complexity of an algorithmic design. | 1e30
|
10000% | Digital Art |
|
AI Imagery | Artificial Intelligence (AI) can output digital images from a prompt entered by a human. It analyzes large sets of data, then uses that analysis to produce new images drawing from what it studied. | 6e32
|
12000% | Algorithmic Art Endless Inspiration |
|
Meaning | When an AI generates an image, it does so without intent, and with no motivation besides responding to a prompt. However, does an artwork need intent? If an image is created regardless, are human artists needed? | 6e33
|
800% | AI Imagery |
Mass Creation Efficiency[]
| Icon | Name | Description | Cost | Efficiency | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Street Art | Humans always find ways to express themselves, even if the only canvas available is a wall. Street art was born out of city environments, where artists could reclaim public spaces with graffiti and murals. | 5e28
|
200% | Mass Creation |
|
Socially Engaged Art | As art becomes more democratized, new voices are added to the mix. Marginalized artists are now able to share their perspectives to larger audiences through their artwork, telling stories that have often been silenced. | 3e29
|
100% | Mass Creation |
|
Communities | From the dawn of prehistory, humans have looked to build places of belonging. The internet has made this easier than ever, as online communities bring people together, allowing them to share original creations and fan art. | 5e30
|
600% | Mass Creation |
|
Meme | The internet has made it easy to share simple, customizable image templets known as memes. Some remain local to their specific communities, while others go viral beyond the boundaries of their original group. | 2e31
|
133.7% | Internet Communities |
|
GIF | When unable to parse tone or body language, people must invent other methods to show intent. A form of self-expression unique to internet culture, the GIF uses moving imagery to express reactions and emotional states. | 6e31
|
200% | Meme |
|
Endless Inspiration | With a near-infinite amount of art at the fingertips of humanity, it's easier than ever to find inspiration. However, humans aren't the only ones utilizing this database of art. | 2.5e32
|
125% | Communities |
|
Anti AI Imagery | The ethics of AI art is a subject of debate. When a machine uses human-created artwork as a foundation, and then recycles it without the permission of the artists, it raises the question of who truly owns the resulting art. | 2e33
|
500% | Endless Inspiration AI Imagery |
|
Legacy | Modern humans create and share more visual art than ever before. Yet in the grand scope of existence, imagery is still exceedingly rare. With every image created, humans leave their unique mark on the universe. | 2e34
|
0% | Meaning |
Tech Tree[]
|
Trivia[]
- This event was formerly named Speaking Without Words; it got renamed while it was in the beta.
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