Full project title: Design, Interrupted: An Interactive Exhibition of Algorithms at Work
Inspiration rarely comes from leafing through books and magazines, instead creatives now search platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Image, where images are optimized and aggregated. There are many people who raise questions about the fairness and racial diversity of online image search.
In fact, algorithmic image sourcing in ideation can be construed as another unintended consequence of AI, one that sits alongside issues surrounding biases and transparency. This project situates these questions within the context of design and considers how a critical early stage of the design process might be “interrupted” by algorithmic bias.
This project answers design’s interruptions with an interactive gallery installation and workshop, incorporating animation to create an immersive, engaging experience, allowing the designer to (re)consider ideation through fresh eyes. The aim of this is to foster a dialogue with creative professionals.
In particular, the workshop will focus on industrial designers, who design products, objects and services. The industrial design profession predates digital, allowing us to evaluate changes in ideation rendered through algorithms. As designers work in a visual language, this project provides a dynamic opportunity to work using designers’ methods and toolkits to communicate academic research in a design-friendly lexicon.
The in-person gallery installation will provide space to literally visualize algorithmic search, allowing a tacit knowledge a venue to become more explicit. Through this, the researchers and designers will be able to productively confront the role algorithmic image search plays in ideation.
Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Project role: Principal Investigator
Kathryn Eccles has research interests in the impact of new technologies on Humanities scholarship, and the re-organisation of cultural heritage and higher education in the digital world.
DPhil Student
Project role: Researcher
Maggie’s doctoral research focuses on AI and creativity. She is incorporating visual art as a part of a practice-based methodological approach to understand how creatives find inspiration through algorithmic image search.
