<aside>

</aside>

<aside> 📍

You are not lost.

You have arrived at a sub-page in the AIxDESIGN Archive.

This is a public repository – our way of working in the open and sharing as we go.

Have fun!

</aside>

<aside>

INDEX

</aside>

🌱 Introduction

At AIxD, we've been investigating the capabilities and limitations of generative AI (what is it good for and what is it absolutely not good for?) and what makes its outputs meaningful and impactful (what makes it good). In collaboration with Ancestral AI Research Artist Thiago Britto, we've deepened our observations and insights on AI in relation to cultural memory, decolonial futures, and ancestral wisdom.

🐚 Generative AI for Critical Fabulation

Critical fabulation - the practice of imagining and creating narratives that challenge dominant historical perspectives - is emerging as a powerful application of generative AI.

This tension between colonial influence and decolonial imagination becomes a central theme in exploring how AI can be used to revisit and reimagine erased histories.

"Inserting this baggage of questioning into emerging technologies, which both facilitate the construction of images and reproduce limited imaginaries about Black existence, is also an act of subversion."

IMG_9631.MOV

🦢 Creating What We Wish to See, But Haven't

One of the most challenging aspects of this project was using AI to visualize what has been historically erased or never documented. How do you prompt for images of transatlantic travel before Columbus when such imagery doesn't exist in historical records? This challenge led us to explore different approaches to prompting that go beyond visual references.

🪻 Prompting from Memory, Senses & Imagination / Multi-Sensory Prompting / Prompting in Textures, Rhythm, and Scent

We discovered that effective prompting often needs to engage multiple senses and memories. In Thiago's words, this involves:

• "Using narration, orality, breathing, pauses, rhythm, temperature"
• "Popular textures, color, and the taste of fruit"
• "Thinking about mixing organic sounds"

This multi-sensory approach to prompting helps create images that feel more unique and authentic to lived experience, rather than merely reproducing existing often trope-y visual references. This approach to prompting becomes not just a technical exercise but a form of cultural preservation and resistance, drawing on traditional practices of encoding knowledge in ways that preserve their meaning while protecting them from colonial appropriation.