2024 Webster Library Exhibitions

Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice

The image shows three hands cupped together, fingers curving in to hold a large, glossy red apple. The apple appears centred in the image, with a visible stem on top. The hand from the top is free-floating with no connection to a wrist and presents six fingers. The two hands on the bottom are connected to the wrists and have three visible fingers.

Embodiment by Sydney McMannus

May 6 – May 29, 2024

Webster Library, vitrines and display cases on LB-2

The Webster Library is pleased to present "Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice," an exhibition showcasing the works and reflections of design and computation arts students of the fall 2023 course DART491 discursive design studies. Located in the vitrine on the library's first floor, the exhibition presents a collection of student works that explore questions that arise from confronting creative self-expression with automation and artificial intelligence.

The exhibition "Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice" showcases the works of students who attended the course DART491, Discursive Design Studies, in the fall semester of 2023. In this course, students explored the potential and limits of generative AI while developing their artist statements, confronting what mattered to them and their creativity with generative AI's tendency to hallucinate, confabulate, and produce 'BS' as per Harry Frankfurt's terminology, navigating the fine line between the automated, the genuine, the absurd and machine-generated happy accidents.

Throughout the semester, students explored various topics related to AI and beyond, including authenticity, authorship, spirituality, inclusion, sustainability, design justice, and identity. Reflections, conversations, and threads of computations ran in parallel using ChatGPT, Dalle, or Stable Diffusion, articulating responses with the help of creatively prompting generative AI tools. The resulting works are a unique blend of human enquiry and curiosity and machine-generated output, questioning the potential and limitations of AI in creative fields like art and design.

From these diverse topics, two overarching perspectives emerged, represented by the background images in the vitrines: On the right, a critical view of the corporate infrastructure providing generative AI tools, and on the left, the personal experience of navigating or passively being exposed to this new reality. Interestingly, humour often guided the exploration in these uncharted territories, adding a light-hearted touch to confronting questions about our individual and collective futures. All works, including students' reflections, can also be viewed on the digital counter.

With these works, the students prompt the viewers of this exhibition to ponder how the next generation of creatives may navigate opportunities and risks and what it means to develop one's voice and have it heard in the age of AI.

Curated by Florian Grond, Assistant Professor of Design and Computation Arts, and Shadi Roozie, TA and graduating student of the Master of Design program.