/imagine prompt : Better Building Blocks
We experience the uncanny alienness of working with emerging AI systems when we use fundamentally new building blocks to construct these exciting new realities.
From the smallest pixels to the largest cityscapes,
AI tools are extremely adept at using an almost fractal-like, self organisational approach to sculpt wholly believable expressions. We live today in the follies of our past, with cities built in building blocks not entirely of our choosing. Our smallest Urban “pixels” are planetary pollutants, and we’re stuck in a built paradigm of amazing indifference.
What if we could re-imagine this paradigm? In our imaginations of new cities, would we choose our building blocks differently?
In selecting a random and whimsical building block, we see the potential to explore these visualisations at various scales. Say hello to Ducky.
As we start our exploration, we first self-reference our own building block.
Much as a city is an assemblage of concrete, steel and brick pixels, here’s a Ducky made of a thousand duckies.
Honest concrete
or
Brutalist aesthetic
exploring the unholy union between serious Modernist structures and our friendly Ducky, we now see things that cannot be unseen. Ducky now quacks at our tight asses when we say
In
“
”
“
”
We observe in awe what happens when a million rubber duckies congregate.
The smallest “pixel” of our built experience will change dramatically with the simultaneous flowering of Sensor Technology, Data Analytics and Public Outrage. We live in cities that are Urban hothouses, racking up massive ecological footprints, concentrating toxins into their residents en-masse. Can machine imaginations challenge Human Myopia?
Can we build our New Cities with better building blocks? What would these magical, inspiring, ‘performative’ cities look life? Can Machine Hallucination shape Public opinion and demand more from our municipalities and developer lobbies?
MidJourney and other democratically deployed tools may find a useful place in citizen activism. They will enable us to visualise cities built on alternative blocks. They could enable individual citizens outside of ossified Architectural practices to build their own versions of Future Cities.
What
if you sense the germ of elemental magic and transcendental beauty in a
daydream
while
sipping
through a beautiful goblet?
Could a Machine Hallucination allow you
to draw an
architecture
that expresses
your
current
Mental environment?
Can
your daydream of this new Building block help direction industries, say for example - The recycling of Glass into a wider palette of new forms?
While MidJourney may still be in a fanciful, playful, flirtatious affair with most Architecture and Design practices, there is a very real partnership in the making. In aiding imaginations, it may provide a powerful assistance in thinking beyond encumbrances and practicalities, in emerging problem areas where our biases have already blinkered our imaginations of what cities can be.
And
we need all the help we can get in reimagining this relationship with our Planet and it’s limited Mineral Resources.
India
of
generated over 10 Lakh Tonnes of electronic waste in 2019-2020. Only 22% of this collected, dismantled, recycled or disposed off. We are now seeing a 31% increase in the amount of electronic waste generated annually. Our Government and Policy frameworks around this are in a state
shambles. Can an augmented mind help visualise an alternate built form using new building blocks emergent on our landscapes?
We may use potentially use Algorithms to help us create a new Linnaen Directory of E-waste, creating a powerful base of materials that are sorted by hazard, risk, usage, toxicity, value and relevance.
The world of Art may be the first to explore the potential of these materials, creating an aspirational new paradigm around this neglected part of our landscape, forging new connections with these Building Blocks.
Art and Fashion usually take on the mantle of faster iterations, churning out new imaginations and proliferating across our social media feeds, feeding the hungry culture machine, shifting opinions one at a time.
Emergent Crafts practices may integrate Gold rescued from old PCBs into traditional Zardozi fabrics, forging new alliances between the aspirational elite and the detritus of civilisation.
Early experiments in the use of these blocks may enter the built environment with a range of ugly buildings, built on a tight budget, responding to a new set of Government regulations, maybe even a city-wide ban on all new construction.
As we get more conversant with this new Material palette, new permutations and combinations emerge, allowing a proliferation of new expression and more refined Building.
As the plodding ponderous Architecture field adopts these blocks, we may start seeing them appear across new landscapes.
Eventually, these materials will make it to our most exalted buildings, leaving behind century old legacies, allowing our ancestors to look back and sense the Zeitgeist of our times.
