Abstract
In centaur chess – also known as cyborg or advanced chess – humans play in collaboration with an AI that generates a set of moves that the human chooses from. Since the 90s most humans play worse than most mid-level chess AI, but we can still beat the best supercomputers when playing as a human-AI pair. What does a future of centaur design look like? Collaboration with AI is the near future, but what will the profession of graphic design look like in 15 years? Can we build an ethical future of design? One that is self critical in its relation to capital and works against inherent injustices of data violence.
Artist Statement
I am a graphic and interactive designer and front-end developer. I think design has potential and power to intervene and tip a worlding’s affective bloom-space. Teaching, learning, and learning-through-teaching are central to my practice, as is research and accretion. Practically my current work is heavily focused on typography, 3D rendering, and image-making with a punk and non-precious relationship with my digital tools. I am more interested in the broken rather than the right way to do a thing because through dissolution of processes new better ways might be built, and I might build new free tools to do these things better. I like building websites because I still believe in the net as a playground, weird warren, and way to find fellow travelers. Moments of randomness make their way into my work, but only as a way to escape from tired work patterns that might constrain what I make. I strongly believe in free access to tools and raw materials for digital craft, and the typefaces I make are all free to use and re-combine. This and my interest in teaching are parts of my larger belief in community building through generosity. Humor, critical theory, technology, and politics are also central in my work; humor serving to temper the seriousness of the deep topics I only begin to scratch the surfaces of.
