NB: because entrance to campus currently requires a Columbia ID, please reach out to Zachary Torres ([email protected]) by Tuesday, October 28 if you require guest access this event. Due to campus restrictions we are unable to honor last-minute requests.
Generative AI does not create new images out of thin air; it generates images that have a “certain something” in common with a selection of images we have fed into it. This selection, often called a dataset, can be generic or custom-made; either way, Generative AI automates the imitation and replication of some of its common visual features. In the past, these common visual features used to be called a style. Imitation and styles were for centuries the backbone of the classical tradition in European art, but both terms were de facto banned by 20th-century modernism. Reference to precedent in modernist art, when acknowledged, was generally reframed as collage, citation, intertextuality, assemblage, or pastiche. But none of these terms describes the technical logic of today's Generative AI. As the rise of Generative AI is bringing the practice of stylistic imitation back to our design schools and to the design professions, we urgently need to learn again what imitation is, how it works, what it does, and how we can deal with it today, in critical and creative terms. Every dataset is a canon, but every reference to precedent is based on preference, and we know all too well that preference is often a proxy for prejudice.
Mario Carpo is Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory at University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture and part-time Gao Feng Professor of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University, Shanghai. His research and publications focus on the history of early modern architecture and on the theory and criticism of contemporary design and technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001) has been translated into several languages. His most recent books are The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011); The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence (2017); and Beyond Digital. Design and Automation at the End of Modernity (2023), all published by the MIT Press. Mario Carpo is currently a fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University.
personal website: mariocarpo.com
