UNIT 3 REFLECTION

UNIT 3

The medium chosen for my unit three project was a manifestation of my previous works I had produced for this class, with the addition of animated frames and voiceover text. This essentially allots to a collection of Gif’s, or, short animations, in this case only being made up of a few dozen frames each. The audio recording in the background is a proposed AI personality, selling the idea of artificially intelligent architecture machines, to you, the proposed user, in an overall attempt to make your lives easier. I suppose I ended up using Gif’s because of their inevitable graphic intrigue, and overall appeal to students in my field of study, whom are my primary target audience for this unit. AI being utilized in professions like architecture is still quite theoretical in many aspects, alternatively, this form of representation can give the viewer a more understandable vision of the argument being proposed.

My unit three project, while being a video file, made it easy to share with my target audience, I was able to send the video to closer classmates via email and messenger and used my connections with the social media department to further my reach to the rest of my class via Instagram. The Gif’s can be viewed individually with no voice over, or can be played as one continuous story, stitching together the narrative of my argument. The individual Gif’s gave whoever viewed them, a chance to investigate further, and if so, proposed to that individual the entire one minute and 38 seconds of film discussing the proposed nature an AI capable machine would have on our future profession. The tone of the narration was also used as a tool to encourage different feelings and opinions on what this proposed reality would entail, weather producing a more positive reaction or a negative one. The film starts out normally enough, with the AI narrator explaining the benefits of AI/Human interaction, but gains a slightly eerie atmosphere towards the end, as the AI proclaims, “no human interaction will be necessary”, while the voice slowly glitches out of existence. This aspect of the film encourages my audience to question weather or not this reality could realistically take place, and whether this should be allowable. The film ends with a quote by Patrick Hebron, who states, “It’s unfounded that AI can replace humans, especially as designers.” Meaning, AI’s influence on architecture is not to degrade the human aspects, but to enhance our abilities as designers with the appropriate tools, we can often see AI as a threat to our professions, but this is not their intended purpose.

I was able to get a few solid responses from classmates regarding my animation, some of whom simply commented on the topic in a graphical manner, while a select few had stronger opinions on the subject. This was an ideal reaction, as the topic is growing more controversial amongst younger designers, I was pleased that my peers were experiencing similar thoughts on the subject. I had one peer explain the benefits AI has to offer architecture, disregarding more negative implications that it might pose, while another student thought AI integration was unnecessary, describing AI as, “a degradation of true creative thought”. Unfortunately, the film did not manage to start any debates between other groups of students, but the reaction that I was able to receive was quite satisfactory. In the future it would be fortunate if more of my colleagues could find interest in topics like this one, there seems to be a great deal of application for people in our position now and Possibile realities like AI need more attention than they are getting.

Throughout the course of the semester I had received a few comments from classmates regarding my unit two portfolio assignment, some of which had little to mention with regards to criticism but had other points on the presentation or tone of my writing. As stated here, “The modern design really makes this inviting for the reader to read and is helped by the images for overall breakup of words, as well as understanding.” This was a reassuring comment for overall presentation, but still didn’t speak to the actual written work or the graphics I had produced for this Unit. The next comment cleared that up right away, by expressing that the text was easy enough to understand while being relatable to other disciplines as stated, “I don’t know the first thing about architecture, but I was able to understand the border point you were making. That is what I have really liked about your piece, although it was directly about the relationship between architecture and AI, the basic ideas could have been applied to the combination of AI and any number of disciplines including financial planning and medicine.” This comment also acted as reassuring as to the clarity of my writing style, which I am not always certain of its clarity, there was however a part two to this comment, which is as follows, “One suggestion that I would make is that you try to incorporate more rich forms of media. By this I mean video and insightful graphics that help tell your story, not just break up blocks of text.” I was at first a bit confused, I had though the images I had Produced would be effective in communicating my argument successfully, but after reading the paper repeatedly, I came to the same conclusion, that in fact they don’t work in all cases and not with all disciplines. It was because of this that I decided to Use a different form of narration and graphical approach, one in which would still utilize graphics, but by posing them in a more understandable light. The animated Gif’s, I believe do just that, by giving the standard graphics a bit of context, you can start to feel the artificial life being emitted from them, eerie is a word one might use, but effective as a narrative tool.

 
The final section for this unit involved the re assessment of previous posts I had made to my blog over the past month and while there is usually a high level of effort put into these posts, there are always blanks to be filled in. Going back through the posts was in a way fascinating, I have never previously had a written collection of work anything like this one, although messy or unfinished at times, it feels relaxed yet researched. I ended up editing a variety of posts, such as the graphic novel post, reading more of the book to better illustrate the overall narrative. I think it will be odd not to keep writing on here after this class has ended, it all seems slightly surreal.

Sources

Neumann, Kyle. "Architecture and Technology." UNIT 2 PORTFOLIO. October 26, 2018. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://architectureandtech.blogspot.com/2018/10/unit-2-project_25.html.

Dickinson, Duo. "Will Architecture in the Future Be a Luxury Service?" ArchDaily. August 02, 2018. Accessed September 17, 2018. https://www.archdaily.com/899483/will-architecture-in-the-future-be-a-luxury-service.

Harris, Sam. "Can We Build AI without Losing Control over It?" TED: Ideas worth Spreading. June 2016. Accessed October 24, 2018. https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it#t-855839.

Crosbie, Michael J. ""I Don't Really See AI as A Threat": Imdat As on Artificial Intelligence in Architecture." ArchDaily. September 30, 2018. Accessed October 24, 2018. https://www.archdaily.com/902978/i-dont-really-see-ai-as-a-threat-imdat-as-on-artificial-intelligence-in-architecture.

O'Donnell, Kathleen M. "Embracing Artificial Intelligence in Architecture." AIA. Accessed December 02, 2018. https://www.aia.org/articles/178511-embracing-artificial-intelligence-in-archit.