“...the allure of the image is in the way it can cast off the material conditions of its production... AI images produce the illusion of some kind of objectivity. Difficult decisions about what is built, where, by whom and for how much are sublimated into a model designed to produce convincing outputs.” –Recessed Spaces
I just finished reading through a piece by Matthew Lloyd Roberts on Recessed Spaces that really resonated with some of the thoughts rattling around in my mind when it comes to the perpetual search for aesthetic objectivity in design.
As a piece of architectural criticism, it’s focused mainly on the role of generative AI in the imagination of architectural projects, spaces, and style, and the ways that the technology—with alarming success—elides questions about whose work went into the image and how the ideas it “proposes” could become a reality.