Wolf-Gordon Introduces Conceptual Project: Human-Generated vs. Al-Generated Design

Col­lec­tion: Project: HI >AI
I+S 
Aug. 28, 2023

Wolf-Gor­don has intro­duced its lat­est con­cept-dri­ven col­lec­tion of dig­i­tal­ly print­ed PVC-free wall­cov­er­ings, ​“Project: HI >AI”, a time­ly snap­shot of human intel­li­gence and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence meet­ing. Cura­tor and chief cre­ative offi­cer Mary­beth Shaw invit­ed sev­en cre­atives to devel­op orig­i­nal pat­terns and sub­mit­ted ver­bal descrip­tions of their work to input into Al imag­ing soft­ware. Shaw and Michael Loughlin,Wolf-Gordon design direc­tor, edit­ed them to achieve rel­e­vant approx­i­ma­tions or con­trasts with the orig­i­nal art.

Rang­ing from print­mak­ers to con­cep­tu­al artists, art jew­el­ers to sign painters, the artists rep­re­sent diverse media, cul­tur­al back­grounds and geo­gra­phies: Hilary Lorenz, print media artist, Abiquiu, NM; Ray­lene Maras­co, tex­tile artist and founder, Dye­namix, NYC; Jen Mus­sari, cal­lig­ra­ph­er and sign painter, Brook­lyn; Pat Pruitt, met­al­smith, Ada, OK; Chris­tine Tarkows­ki, artist and pro­fes­sor, SAIC, Chica­go; Frank Tjep­ke­ma, design­er and founder, Tjep, Ams­ter­dam; Ghis­laine Vinas, inte­ri­or design­er, NYC.

Shaw took the song ​“Human Behav­ior” by Bjork (writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of an ani­mal observ­ing humans) and sug­gest­ed for the par­tic­i­pants that with ​“Project: HI > AI”, humans might be replac­ing the ani­mal with a machine. Each cre­ative explored diverse themes such as the process of mak­ing, the unique­ness of human-gen­er­at­ed art, and anx­i­ety over imping­ing tech­nol­o­gy, sur­veil­lance and con­trol in our lives. Although the AI soft­ware could not match the human’s cre­ations, the results are remark­able for their range of inter­pre­ta­tion which goes from an oth­er­world­ly take on organ­ic and tra­di­tion­al motifs to hand-drawn and ‑paint­ed com­po­si­tions, as well as mul­ti-step art-mak­ing processes.