UA7: Text to Image
2023.05.20. – 05.28.
Weekdays: 2pm – 8pm
Weekends: 11am – 6pm
wrm
Unrealized Archive 7: Text to Image collects works that treat text as material. Inspired by the new wave of discussions about authorship in the age of Generative AI (and the emergence of “AI Prompt Engineer” as an occupation), Text to Image explores how graphic designers use systematic conceptual approaches in their work. Although mainstream media often portrays the phenomena of Generative AI as a disruptor to the visual arts industry, conceptual artists and graphic designers have long explored the relationship between text, typography, and image, as well as text as a generator of image. The works gathered here continue in this tradition, while also responding to today’s conditions by exploring the potential for form-making through computing, as well as questioning the ethics and motives inherent to the structures that underpin the technology industry.
Unrealized Archive uncovers “unrealized” graphic design projects that consumed many hours—sometimes years—of work, but were never produced. Unlike in architecture and product design, where “unbuilt” or “speculative” work is forefronted as an important subject of critical discourse, most of these projects have until now been buried in flat files or deep in hard-drive storage.