2225 illustrations with Ai

Based on my last blog post, the letter I wrote from a future ancestor and my talk for IXD Defuse Dublin next week I’ve been playing with Canva’s AI app Magic Media.

The letter I was invited to create is for a film project supported by the Well-being Ireland Alliance, from ancestors 200 years in the future. It and the theme of the talk for IXD Defuse had me thinking about futuristic tools, biomimicry, female intuition and indigenous wisdom. I started pumping prompts onto Canva for my slides and was getting interesting results.

So once the slides were gone I wondered what my future ancestor might look like, what technologies she might use old new potential, suggested…

This is a selection images from my prompting the AI to produce a future relational designer in 2225, an ancestor to be. I played with the ideas for about two hours the results were spectacular. I’m thinking about making a postcard series and some prints. I maybe the only one who really enjoys them but let’s see…

I had to work hard to get the images to open out to different diversities and geographies. I also had to really work on the maturity scale of women. The Ai by default served me men and then when prompted for women, white women.

It brings to mind Emma Dabiri’s recent work on beauty in her new work Disobedient Bodies. I’ve not read it yet but I will and I’m sure it will change how I create images. These ones still conform to ‘classic colonised beauty’.