Pro - Futures

Real-Time: AI - Story Generator

Pro-Futures is an interactive application that produces films based on a user’s input. The user provides a style, author, graphic preference, and a prompt. Pro-Futures provides the user with a film told in the framework of a para-fictional documentary. These documentaries describe possible futures based on data extrapolations and thought experiments when pushed to their limits. The resulting films give the user a hint of what it would be like to swim in a flood, or what happens if the ramblings around the communal office water cooler are extrapolated past their hypothetical scenarios.

Advisors

Casey Rehm, Soomeen Hahm, Case Miller, & Eli Joteva
SCI-Arc - Summer 2023

Exhibitions & Awards

A+D Museum - AI & Generative Art Award
SCI-Arc EDGE Thesis Award

Links

CyberNest

Database & Map of Content

CyberNest is a system of networked resources, references, writings, scripts, localized AIs, and miscellaneous content serving as the conceptual and pragmatic substructure to the Pro-Futures AI-Story Generator. Both these projects are crafted at the limits of my ability to deal with complexity and the management of systems composed of a large variety of assets. The CyberNest allows embedded links, node-based canvases, and external connections to manage mass content. This database was customized and configured specifically to aid in the building of complex systems that wire many localized AIs to work in serial and parallel processes to produce stories.

Advisors

Soomeen Hahm & Casey Rehm
SCI-Arc - Fall 2022 & Spring 2023

AI - Primitives

Custom Collection of Local AI Models

At the time of developing this project, most AIs are wedged into plugins that have not yet been fully integrated into the general software suites we are used to seeing. After all, this is a paradigm shift that should leave us questioning the state and future of our favorite design interfaces (adobe, mcneal, epic, and the rest). Located here is a curated list of the AI-Primitives I have localized and integrated into nearly every project presented on this webpage. A break from the isolated Google Colabs, impenetrable GitHub repos, and under-kept models hosted on HuggingFace. This is a personal collection that has contributed to all of the plugins, AI-Story Generator components, Pro-Futures, custom tools, and Custom Colabs.

Independent

Creative Technologist

Curated List

Stable (Full), OpenAI (Full), Local LLMs, Content Search, CLIP/BLIP, MiDAS, BlockadeLabs, ElevenLabs, gtts, Stylizers, Upscalars, Animation, 360 Photos, Textures, TTV, TTS, STT, Auto-Generative Renderers

Cajon Pass Landfill

Generative Architecture

The project is a speculative development on co-living with waste and circular ecologies. The Cajon Pass landfill serves as a generator for local food and power production as well as a stockpile for materials research. Insects are farmed and feed on green waste. Once harvested, these bugs are fed to the residents living above the landfill. Methane is extracted from termite mounds and vented from the buried layers to produce power. Materials are continually extracted and converted into the forms housing our resident researchers, including compressed waste mixed with bio-polymers for the structural shell of the inhabitation.

Advisors

Casey Rehm, Case Miller, & Eli Jetova

Exhibited

18th Venice Architecture Biennale:
CITYX Venice Virtual Pavilion
Full Video

SomnaReem

Live Performance

SomnaReem is a live robotic audio/visual performance directed by Qian Gu. I was a part of the team composed of musicians, photographers, lighting, robot technicians, and a creative technologist (myself). My purpose in this project was wiring together audio/visual graphics, motion tracking of the dancer and robots, tuning reactive point clouds, and developing a custom runtime script.

Position

Creative Technologist

Team Members

Director: Qian Gu . Advisors: Soomeen Hahm & Marcelyn Gow . Guest Artist: Aliya Kerimujiang . Photographer: Samil Upadhyay . Lighting: Athziri Morales . Music Composers: Miyuki Blois & Itamar Dedlman

Links

Neo - EPCOT

Co-Authored Paper with GPT & GPT 2

Can GPT play a role in city planning? What if GPT 2 was one of the lead theorists or designers at WED Enterprises? You know, the group responsible for designing the real Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow (EPCOT) for Walt Disney. Neo-EPCOT is a para-fictional news article that showcases the results of EPCOT if it was designed by an AI using the references, agenda, and talking points given by Walt himself in relation to this new city of tomorrow. Also included are the testimonials of those ‘employed based on their abilities’ as the original utopic dream as we recount from Plato.

Advisors

Casey Rehm
SCI-Arc - Spring 2022

Link

Full Paper

AI Architectural Critics

Chat + Stable + CLIP + Object Detection + User Input Integration

Two Chats from Openai are commenting on images generated using Stable Diffusion. Both object detection and CLIP (a caption generator) are used to send descriptions of the generated images to the conversing Chat bots. Based on their responses, Stable's InPainting alters the images. The human user may also change the image or generate new captions whenever to interrupt the critique. Essentially, these AI critics argue about the content of the image and redesign the image in real-time using InPainting. Architectural Critic was a preliminary study of how various localized and linked AIs recognize and relate images-to-words and words-to-images. This project directly lead to the success of Pro-Futures the AI-Story Generator.

Advisors

Soomeen Hahm
SCI-Arc - Spring 2023

Link

Watch the Video

AI-Meets-AI

Real-Time: AI - Automated Conversation

Two Chat GPTs are communicating about a topic in an endless conversation. The human user may interrupt them or change the topic by writing custom prompts in the text box provided. Both the AI-Meets-AI and the AI-Architectural Critic were essential preliminary studies undergone when configuring the larger AI-Story Generator (Pro-Futures). Communications and the memories associated with these non-human elements as they worked within their respective ‘context window’ directly lead to the success of Pro-Futures.

Advisors

Soomeen Hahm
SCI-Arc - Spring 2023

Link

Watch the Video

TrueNorth

Augmented Reality (AR) Mobile Application

TrueNorth is an interactive mobile app that uses Augmented Reality (AR) to visualize Akron’s Northern Arts District history. A digital twin of the immediate site was made to provide a glimpse into the embodied history of the monuments and relics on site. These histories tell about the sites connection to jazz music, the Eire canal, and railroad integration on site that made Akron a major historical player. Each of these stories is told in reference to a postcard that serves as the user interface to accessing historical content. Additional information is embedded within the replica buildings existing on site.

Independent

Kent CAED - Summer 2021

Available on the App Store

AI-Plugins

Custom AI-Based Plugins

As designers we experience this. We are in our design process passing information amongst a number of platforms when specific compatibilities, capabilities, or missing features break our process and force us to navigate around these inconvenient bottle necks. Here are a few tools I have built to break through these bottle necks to increase productivity using AI, Remotes, Google Colabs, Proxy Scripts, and other software solutions.

Independent

Creative Technologist

Selected Custom Plug-Ins

Unreal: Remote Scene Switcher . BlockadeLabs: Generated & Live Streamed to Unreal . Unreal + Stable: User Inputs Streaming Textures . Google Colabs: Dialogue Generator, Text2Speech, Text2Video, and Viewing Script

Links

Custom Colab Collection (Contact for Access)
Full Video

D'Sync

Buttonless Remote Control

Most objects that you find on a podium in the center of a gallery are kept behind felt ropes and behind thick glass. Often accompanied by sign saying either, "do not touch" or "keep out of reach from children". The object located in this gallery is the opposite. It does not want to be looked at, it wants to be held. The motions of the object and the users interaction affect how the scene changes on the wall. D'Sync is a buttonless remote that alters the scene you see on the wall before you. Each nudge, rotation, and wiggle causes an reaction. You must pick up the object to see the changes. But, who knows? It may even listen and react if you talk to it.

Advisor

David Ruy

Teammates

Candace Wu & Amber Zhu

Exhibition

SCI-Arc @ Space 10
Exhibition Filming

Superstimuli

Database & Map of Content

Superstimuli is a collection of networked resources, references, writings, scripts, notes, and miscellaneous content serving as the conceptual and pragmatic substructure to my Design Theory & Pedagogy Anti-Thesis. Filled with Chindogu Objects, Vulgar Studies, Scientific Facts, and Oddities that demand distraction. All of the content in this database which now consists of over 1000 notes, 80 design projects, and 550 categories is made actionable by its tightly networked logic of interconnected content. Superstimuli allows for embedded links, node-based canvases, and external connections to manage mass content. This database was customized and configured specifically to aid in the building of innovative work and has been a generator for countless design, teaching, and publications agendas. Everything is left on the table instead of pruned and sacrificed to benefit the one quintessential Thesis project.

Advisors

David Ruy
SCI-Arc - Summer 2022