Exploring patterns, cultural diversity, and technology through The Mills College Art Museum's collections. The proposed project Shared Pattern (working title) is an attempt to bring different patterns from different cultures together to rediscover them through new media. Often, machine-powered image analysis/generation faces criticism of the nature of technology being exploitative and discriminative. This specific technology is inseparable from the idealization of certain medium and micro labor just like native american electronic circuits. But also, it is merely a process of producing average pixels, just making (different) patterns. What is the final image going to look like and what does that mean will be discovered through this project. I want to discuss the social cost that comes along with the machine image generation that looks very innocuous and fun. In short, the project is to acknowledge and to witness the overlooked patterns and to connect craft and modern technology through a critical lens.

This developing project explores the conspiracy theory about fake birds, specifically pigeons, in relation to modern computing. Ubiquitous computing is one of key moments in computing history, emphasizing invisibility and omnipresence in the design of computational processes. This perception has influenced the development of modern technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), and the urban myth about pigeons seems to share similarities with it. The development of computational processes and the domestication of pigeons also have proximity to authoritarian operations. The project aims to develop a speculative design artifact that investigates the practice of imitating animal forms and dissolving computational processes in the background.

How are robots migrating into the lives of people? Machinery has been with humans for a long time, but robots tend to be on the topic due to their automation, which leads people to perceive each of them as an individual entity. With the rapid pace of technological development, people currently see advanced robots. Sophisticated ones are more expensive and less accessible to the public. However, some started getting involved closer in daily lives or organic beings – four-legged crawlers are chasing away wild animals in Alaska, and people adopt little beepers with faces as their pets. Many robots mimic animals and humans since they were created within the human mind. They often reflect the existing species. They are foreigners who have been residing among us and are at service to certain species. Under the current political climate, many of them are being recruited at war recently. With this circumstance in mind, two questions arise. (1) What does it mean to weaponize anthropomorphized robot entities? How are both parties adapting to each other? (2-1) How would their beings be affected based on the specific political climate change? (2-2) What would be the robotic diaspora when the divisive and violent political climate persists? Will there be a migration? By answering these questions, clues about living with robots and how political climates affect technological artifacts may appear. The research will consider a speculative design (speculative future) and creative practice as a method since the questions are about the affected future. The first step will be looking into examples and references in fiction and real-life present artifacts related to the topic. Next, as practice-based creative research, a digital artifact about the affected imaginary entities will be made.

As artificial intelligent (AI) technology drew attention by expanding its accessibility and way of promotion, the creative community reacted in various ways. Even though the wider application of such technology brought many positive expectations, a grim imagination has been also available. The high resemblance of realistic events convinces and affects the viewers. There are attempts to battle the harm with creating additional AI image detection tools powered by the same technology. However, filtering, sorting, or verifying fake images bear limitations. Generative AI images sometimes benefit from their own falsity because of high-resolution. What does it mean to have a fascination towards high fidelity? What does it mean to have a race to high fidelity for the public distribution? Is such development steered by larger corporations? Is there a similar precedent? This developing project examines different aspects of generative AI imaging through media theory, visual art, and artifacts.