Thumb.CAD: Essays on Technology, Design and Image

Abstract

This work seeks, through the use of jargon from the internet and computing to make an analogy game to situations found contemporaneously in image, digital culture and architecture, showing the intertwining between many factors that increase the complexity of tasks and demanding answers that are also compatible. The essay seeks no to argue against technology and its use, but to discuss the pitfalls of the enchantment generated by its facilities. In this way, questions arise about how to face the problems of a world moulded by accelerated information and communication technologies, in which our ways of thinking are highly influenced by electronic mediation. Finally, it is proposed to discuss a dialogical and cooperative involvement between technology and man that emphasize possibilities and reenchants our tools to reformulate the architectural practice and promote openings for emancipation.

1. Introduction

The text follows an essay structure, and using terms linked to the technology field allows us to deduce two brief statements: the terms, being recent and linked to information science, can generate an ambiguity or misunderstanding of its concepts. It is worth emphasizing that the use of some of these words is done to establish a bridge between the different names treated, to make connections and not to transfigure meanings between them or employ new uses.

Current image consolidation scenario is reinforced by the recent proliferation of generative images conceived by Artificial Intelligence. Obtaining increasingly significant results and reaching a number of users and dissemination on a large scale, their capabilities range from obtaining images by text prompts to videos with non-real human faces and 3D spaces obtained with a simple mouse click. These transformations impact not only art the concept of authorship, plagiarism and the future of design professionals in their various fields.

So, there is no alternative but to deal with the new “soft” infrastructures that are emerging: knowledge, program, cultural and virtual infrastructure. The demand for design and de-design in the ultra-designed, ultra-mediated world is huge, but most architects still respond to these demands in the medieval language of stoic and autonomous construction [1].

What is certain is that this new visuality does not arrive free of problems and paradoxes. At the same time that it opens us up to unprecedented and auspicious perspectives regarding our relationship with the world, it has also distanced us from the world. The way we use the computer and its interfaces today, it has paradoxically expanded the possibilities of our action in the world, and at the same time impoverished the quality of our experience of the world. Computerized representations bring us the world imagetically, but they also serve as a barrier, creating a distance between us and the represented world. And since we started to take the representations sufficiently, as if they were the world, we fall into a simulacrum cult, into a reinvented idolatry [2].

In this way, we will try to address in this text questions about the performance of design and the architect in the face of technological advances and the image and digital technology affirmation as at the momentum, the definitive instruments of communication and production.

2. Thumb.CAD: technical image under the finger tip

The term thumbnail designates an image with the function of intuitively assisting in the navigation of pages and content on the internet, especially for children’s and naïve users. On the internet, it has common use, which designates a miniature image use to draw attention to a particular video, link or page. For content producers in this media, it is a fundamental item that directly interferes with the search results for videos and news, as well as the possible views number and the reach (interactivity) that certain content can receive. This miniaturized image seeks to represent the possible content to be treated by the click made on it, also refining the search engines, with a more communicative, direct and why not democratic role, than would be the textual form.

However, the resource has also been used to act against this same search engine, mainly through the thumbnail image’s communicative capacity. This tactic of accessing false and sensational content can be observed at all times on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and popularly it is called clickbait.

The images start to be produced more to orient themselves from the digital platforms’ perspective with strong aesthetic and communication appeal. This indiscriminate use of image processing and digital manipulation is compounded by the sometimes-illogical way in which text and images are correlated by search engines.

The representations detach themselves from their referents and start to act in an erratic way, almost free recombination [3]. This is added to the constant novelty sensation experienced through an infinite scroll bar, conveying an imaginary seduction experience that is not of a repetitive void, but that of constant new information [4]. The technical image is summarily produced by devices; it is no longer made by planes but by dots and pixels, and it is zero dimensional.

According to Cabral [2], photography carried out using analogue means had as its main elements: the automation of its production, the replacement speed and the ease of its distribution. With the arrival of digital means, such elements will suffer a significant displacement: the automation transmutes into immediacy; replacement speed turns into manipulation; and the ease of distribution creates omnipresence (ubiquity of a photographic universe). The most visible effect of the increase in the speed of the technical image essential characteristics is undoubtedly a generalized banalization in their use. An inflation of images will mark our daily lives and permeate all our most common activities, and they are calculated images.

Thus, computerized representations bring us the world through images and serve as a barrier, creating a distance between us and the represented world. Canadian architects and theorists Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier [5] argue that if we want to understand the current excessive image proliferation scenario, we will have to refer back to a crucial moment in the History of Western Culture, when even in Greek Theater the separation between stage and audience. With this distinction, a “distance” arises between the show, the author and the audience, making theatre a different manifestation of ancient rituals where these “distances” did not exist. Interestingly, while the ritual reinforces and corroborates specific worldviews, the theatre opens itself to experimentation with new worldviews. The establishment of this distance in the theatre will be especially characterized by three aspects: predominance of the visual (and to a lesser extent the auditory), the feasibility of a rational development (through the institution of authorship), and a bodily disengagement from most of the people involved (the audience).

The thumbnail goes towards this miniaturization idea and availability at your fingertips, a latent reduction and technical devices compression, the videos length, less text and writing, attention, patience and goes on. Images transform all our desires, objectivities and conditions into them [6].

The image return is not revolutionary news as Flusser [6] had already warned 40 years ago, but a comeback to its importance as a majority communication after the writing invention and the importance of texts. At one point, it was the writing that explained the images of the world, in the present-future it explains the text’s illustrations. The cognition and thinking abstraction are nothing but a progressive subtraction of the object’s dimensions, their roughness and imperfections.

The visualization itself becomes a trap, and we jump between scales and engage in this centesimal universe of pixels, codes, data and zero dimensionality. Alienation starts from this moment, when we try to incorporate linear thinking into the surface thinking. Decisions, design and work gradually become semi-autonomous. The virtual is interwoven in the way of experimentation in increasingly abstract forms, but simultaneously intentional. Data are said to be disembodied and neutral but are stained and occluded somewhere. The main implication that technical images, device proliferation, automation, emulation, semi-autonomy and memetic culture always will generate is the program affirmation.

The fiercest critics fear the objectification of desire (through automation) and the dissolution of communication (through interaction).

In this sense, a discussion on how we deal with this images production and interpretation becomes important, which will directly impact on culture, behaviour and workings, especially designers, architects and other professionals who manage the communication of their ideas with others, the world and the multiple technological devices and social media, through images.

2.1 The programmatic image: memetic cultures and semi-autonomy design

In 1936, the German philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin published one of his best-known essays, “The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility” [7], where he analysed the impact of new technologies, in particular photography and cinema. For him, the new techniques will lead to a gradual disembodiment of thought embodied in artistic production, causing a constant loss of aesthetic affection which he called “aura” of the art object, understood by him as the character that defines the uniqueness of each work, and which is now being reproduced indefinitely due to the many technical advances.

Benjamin [7] noted that the works of art were always reproducible throughout history, with falsification by copies and moulds but with the technical emergency, the authenticity of the original is lost. In a reproduction culture, the original does not matter much, and consequently, this artwork and image “aura”, weakens and loses its charm. Sixty years later, the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard [8] remakes the argument by saying that it was no simply that the importance of the original had been lost by the proliferation of copies in our simulation culture. Instead, in this era dominated by third-order simulation, we have entered a new phase. If the second order was the moment as Benjamin observed, when the distinction between original and copy was broken, the third order is marked by the complete disappearance of any reference to the original notion and often to reality itself, giving rise to a new kind of charm.

Several other contemporary studies seek to deepen the view of repetition and copying, giving rise to meme neologism. Coined by biologist Richard Dawkins [9] in 1976, the word meme refers to how ideas and culture (music, phrases, words, images) spread, reinforcing the argument that culture is propagated by imitation. The task of technical images is thus to establish a general code to reunify culture [10].

The technical improvement allows digital reproduction to clone, emulate and cut without suffering the deterioration that usually happened in the previous mechanical era. In this memetic culture fuelled by likes, tweets and shares, it is not the original that becomes important, but the number of times it is replicated. Originality gives rise to replication and repetition as a discourse enhancement.

An obvious question is whether the memetic culture spread in digital media is linked to copyright issues and image use. How to protect these rights when a digital file can be copied, emulated and reproduced endlessly? YouTube, for example, only “monetizes” original content, and uses algorithm and the platform’s own users to identify videos that appropriate music, images and parts of other videos with protected rights, but the problem is much deeper. In 2013, the 3D print of the “Liberator” a firearm was made available online and epitomizes the potential but also the risk associated with the rapid digital file’s dissemination. Days after its publication, distribution and manufacture were banned from the public. The American government justified that there was no way to regulate the data control and possession relationships, but the print files were available in many torrents for several years until they were started to be controlled.

It is not just a matter of dealing with the technical capacity question of replication generated by digital technologies. There are interlocking social and cultural factors that reveal or hide extreme conditions emerging from these technological capabilities.

For Weizman [11], the image goes beyond the mere representation question, but most of the things that are communicated and the decisions made, by humans or networks shared between humans and technological devices, are made through image sharing. The images, the aesthetic domain, become operationalized.

Suppose prehistoric magic ritualizes certain models and myths. Current magic ritualizes another kind of model: programs [10]. Technical images mean programs; they are projections that aim at their receptors and models for our behaviour [6]. The main implication that technical images, device proliferation, automation, emulation, semi-autonomy and memetic culture will generate is this program affirmation. Programs are characterized by systems in which chance becomes a necessity. Games in which all virtuality, even the least likely ones, will necessarily take place if played for a long time [12].

There is no last device or program for all programs, behind a program there is the need for a metaprogram for its programming. It is an opening upwards and tending to the infinite [10]. The man-appliance relationship is then reversed, and it is we who now work in appliances function, even though we continue to deny the loss of that control. A Program affirmation and a desire for its affirmation, since the programs are getting better given their infinite possibilities amount that surpasses man’s decision-making capacity.

The device’s speech will become even more imperative, thanks precisely to these telematics and unintelligible dialogues. The devices always work more independently of the programmers’ motives. And devices that have been programmed by other devices appear more frequently [12].

With digital information manipulation technologies, interactive systems can make use of automation to abstract repetitive and low-significance tasks, and thus enhance their scope; on the other hand, conversely, automation systems can now make use of interaction to become more adaptive and open.

2.2 Obfuscation: hidden the image and it’s programs

Obfuscation is a technique in the programming language, which aims to mask the real code meaning and intention, thus serving either as an obstacle to the base code copy/decryption or to hide the algorithm real intention. The obfuscation method works by automatically and regularly shuffling the variables, leaving the code legibility impaired, with meaningless characters or changing the execution steps’ order.

Obfuscation has some parameters that make it less or more complex, such as power (the complexity degree of the obfuscated code in relation to the original), resistance (to cyber-attacks), stealth (code camouflage with the rest of the program) and cost (runtime and overload on the obsolete system in relation to the original system). The obfuscation concept/practice can also be used in both directions. Ambiguity on how to note is a virtual constant factor. The technique can be used to protect passwords, personal data, programming lines, anti-piracy control against hacker’s attacks, malwares and others stuff. But they also serve to monitoring, control, determine, presume, suggest, collect, and provide feedback, in short to increase the opacity of the so-called “black box system”.

According to Glanville [13], James Clark Maxwell was a British philosopher and mathematician, who besides having contributed to modern theories on electromagnetism used the black box concept in a pioneering way. The concept was attached to cybernetics studies by W. Ross Ashby [14], as an artifice that allows the observer to construct a description explaining some system behaviour. One of the best examples to illustrate the black box concept is given by Flusser [10] when analysing the camera and its operation: “The photographer when using a camera must be only part of the device competence so that the whole camera never reveals itself. The box’s darkness is the challenge. Although the photographer knows the box output and input, he does not know what is going on inside the box. The impenetrability of this system and its complexity is what can be called a black box”.

Concept inserted not only in the internal machine structure such as cameras, computers and cell phones, but which is also rooted in economic, political and cultural systems, translating specific forms of suggestion and interpretation.

For Bridle [15], there is a concrete and causal relationship between the complexity of the systems we encounter every day and the opacity with which most of these systems are configured and their direct relationship with inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism issues.

With the digital technology’s emergence, the connection between magic and technology is frequently invoked again, since the functionality of digital devices challenges the common observer’s understanding. We thus repeat the same behaviour of the primitive man in relation to the pre-scientific world: we call magic what we do not understand but which in the digital technology case is less linked to his experience as it was in the archaic sense, and more to illusionism resulting from ignorance in relation to what is programmed or, hidden in the black box [16].

The observation of these images/data and its programs, should not be performed uncritically, but rather explore ways to make more transparent the “black box” of the apparatus, see intentions in these programs and which are usually covered by complexity, opacity and impersonality layers.

Architecture is confined to representation, because instead of making it a philosophical problem, it has become a strategy, a space for manoeuver, a hiding place, and not a means of attack as it should be [17].

Sanford Kwinter [18] writes that the telescope and microscope invention, thus making objects on the smallest scale and those very distant visible to the human eye, were the main key in ending various historical tyrannies. Cabral [19] complements this by noting that this mobility allowed by the microscope and telescope occurs within the scope of scale, which is mainly a space question and only indirectly a question of time. The new visuality that comes with digital technologies allows us a similar mobility strategy, and the main factor that differentiates this mobility is that it does not only occur in space, but mainly in time. In some ways we can now cast our gaze back in time, simulating the past and to a certain extent, the future.

Returning to the questions raised, this is perhaps the great computer contribution to our culture: the possibility of making explicit the mechanisms behind complex processes. If the telescope and microscope showed us scales inaccessible to the unaided/naked human eye, the computer can give us access to the origin of the processes and to understanding of the whole otherwise inaccessible to the unaided/naked eye [18].

Cybernetics is a possible solution for dealing with complex systems (black boxes), transforming unpredictable situations into informative ones.

Complexity is a recurring theme in everything, it is mainly linked to technology and computing, information and systems theory, but it appears eventually more in other areas such as economics, design, architecture and urbanism. Among its many definitions, complexity is related to the difficulty level in forecasting the interconnections present in a system, and it is a way of thinking that can contribute to giving visibility to processes.

For a long time, everything was compared to a machine [3], and the importance of talking about machines, clouds, networks and other metaphors is a challenge that usually encompasses many understandings, many meanings, and, in a way, always ends up leading to a trivialized commonplace. The cloud is the moment metaphor, where we connect, work and store things. The cloud lands at all points and explores the ambiguous status they hold; it is able to mould itself to geographies of power due to its physical distance from the solidity of its intentions.

Technological acceleration transforms the planet, society and the individual daily, but has failed to transform our understanding of these things. The digital paradigm marks a knowledge expansion that results from the increasingly information intensity assets and their extensive dissemination that shape our reality, obscuring disciplinary boundaries [20]. We need not only new technologies but also new metaphors: a meta-language to describe the world that complex systems have generated. New abbreviations, which at the same time recognize and deal with reality in a world in which people, politics, culture and technology and their images are all entangled [15].

2.3 For a cybernetic design: transformations in architectural practice and design process

Cybernetics emerged at the beginning of the information age, in pre-digital communications, creating a connection between human-machine interaction and systems among themselves. As a result, cybernetics frames the world in terms of systems and their goals [21].

The relationship between cybernetics and surveillance and control techniques has been strengthened by the continuous communication tools development and the representation of technical devices. Surveillance and control managed through large bits conglomerates, with the name of Big Data, are now interpreted by algorithms in increasingly larger volumes and collected by capture and information devices in smaller space and time intervals. Its influences range from political campaign promotion and data package sales to lobbying, as well as military strategies.

Weizman [11] points out that there are two forms of violence that are getting deeper: physical and digital. This digital violence was enhanced by the isolation caused by the Corona Virus pandemic, serving as an alibi for companies to use the connection between the two, collecting data, monitoring people and guiding practices that reflect on social/political space structures. Power and control (surveillance/security) are paradoxical variables when technologically oriented. Technology expands power but can concentrate if it is done unevenly. And control since the more sophisticated the security devices, the more sophisticated the attacks also become.

Thus, a search for attempts to solve complexity and reduce its abstraction arises. But the more one tries to explain the virtual world functioning, the more diffuse it seems to get. Flusser [6], adds: the more complex the tools, the more abstract their functions will be.

According to Spuybroek [22], architects have been more obsessed with shapes such as cubes, spheres and other Euclidean geometric shapes, and now they are attracted to clouds, swarms, patterns, automata, cells, rhizomes, substances, fractals, biomimetics and others concepts borrowed from fields like biology and philosophy. They start drawing less and simulating more. Proportion, perspective, typology and other arbitrary and stabilizing cultural forms are no longer the interest focus in the current digital architectural production model; this intermediation role was assumed by CAD software. A move from the generation of processes seen from the outside to the inside, propitiated by the growing importance given to the virtual dimension in architecture. Open dynamic systems bring an approach in which the meaning lies in unveiling potentialities of indeterminations.

A shift in the process generation seen from the outside in, brought about by the growing importance given the dimension of the virtual in architecture.

It is good to remember that the ultra-mediated computational universe becomes dangerous when it ceases to be a heuristic device, of possibility and becomes an ideology that privileges information, technique and access to these facilities, highlighting the image above all things, as is practised in many of the so-called digital architectures and the discourse that accompany them.

Graafland [23], will question if the incorporation of theories about composition, semiotics, philosophy, critical theory and the list continues, can still help in the discovery of a better design/project quality, or if they would actually be a sum of fields belonging to a same postmodern universe that is disguised under a new discourse, in which the longing for theses interdisciplinarities is being used to put on a design and endow it with insignificant meanings.

But how to face the problems of a world formed by information and communication technologies, in which our ways of thinking are highly influenced by electronic mediation? These issues were not restricted to the “design means”, but will also influence the ways we see and experience spaces.

So, the “digital shift” as put by Mario Carpo [24], became larger than was initially thought, in depth and comprehensiveness in architecture. There is no way to highlight only a duality, such as between representation and production, between criticism and design, technology and art, artefact and nature and other divisions, because they are nevertheless not able to understand the full complexity. The digital shift makes their relationships liquefied, and thus other needs arise, such as avoiding taking shortcuts and resisting easy solutions [22].

Profession increasingly needs to deal with the communication systems, work and space acceleration. Understand that cyberspace is not on a plane so different from ours, part of a virtual life taken apart, but that new reasoning is needed more than ever to capture our relations with these digital worlds.

The architecture role idea as an intangible services producer, whether they are digital files for manufacturing, interface design or as an organization model has grown a lot. Growth that goes hand in hand with the manufacturing distributed trend that breaks with the traditional supply chain, as several companies start selling information and digitalized data that allow the production of parts instead of manufacturing and selling them physically. Some factories, like some architectural firms, are moving away from services based solely on drawings and objects to being based on information. The tendency has already been seen in objects such as lamps, clocks and shoes for another time to make artefacts and buildings. For Spuybroek [22], design becomes more about the organization among infinite possibilities.

The material aspect mentioned by Flusser [10] is no longer what gives value or involvement with a particular object, but the software, the virtuality contained therein. In architecture, because it is an object with physicality, scale and wide appropriations, the issue is more delicate, but it is not foreign to these discussions. According to Bitoni [25], materials are no longer formed by the tool progression, as has been the case since the beginning of civilization, where from the first primitive stone tools, we continue to make more sophisticated ones. Our tools are now linguistic; language is now our hammer and saw.

The effective progress of technological advances in architecture will not be solved without organization and rationalization, and it will be done through flexible interactions and not rigid hierarchies, requiring a behaviour that is more adaptable than mechanical.

The essential mechanism for the eventual success of experiences with participation and indeterminacy is feedback. Some solutions go ahead and others do not, but all generate circularity. This requires greater connectivity between architects and other members of the system, to create a holistic workflow. This is the elementary design function of any nature, to improve people’s lives and meet their needs. Put that away, one of the great design tasks nowadays is to adjust connections between things that appear to be disconnected. Task is currently called designing interfaces [3].

Some architects have sought to automate the intuitive realization of their ideas through algorithms, at the risk of falling into the classic trap that tools, regardless of their nature, do not satisfy the objectives and are not even used to interpret their results in addition to computer simulations.

Thus, according to Gobin et al. [26], the use of digital is once again a generalizing specialist system, and the architect’s dilemma continues as it has been since the profession’s emergence, the classic difficulty of translating from conception to representation, and representation for realization.

When designing ontology, the objects, operations and relationships that can be described in an information processing system are determined. This indicates which attributes are stored in files and databases, and with which objects are presented to users to interact [27].

Potentialities that seek flexible interfaces with different abstraction levels capable of gradually involving users and their autonomy and the architecture craft can thus discover other paths for the profession, providing the interfaces that generate involvement and interest in architecture and its agency, challenges that Gordon Pask [28] had already glimpsed 50 years ago.

It is increasingly necessary to think about new technologies in other ways and criticize them to participate significantly in this cybernetic driving. Thinking about the project not as something sealed, but as part of a system open to possible indeterminations.

2.4 Refactoring the image

Refactoring is the process of modifying a system and its program to improve the internal code structure without changing its external behaviour.

The technique improves the software conception (design) and avoids its entropy, reducing its useful life. This entropy is caused by changes with short-term objectives or changes that were not considered in the system design.

Another feature is the ease of understanding, facilitating the maintenance and communication of their motivations, intentions and goals. When analysing the architectural design process, regardless of the tools, there are similar concepts to the refactoring importance in its various stages.

The computer must be a constructive means and not merely representational, not only be understood as a separate tool but as an organizational model, an agent capable of creating continuity in the process.

This continuity paradigm must also consider the body and the suggested spaces imbued with active, undetermined potential, but charged with trends that promote interaction as stated by Cabral Filho [4].

Creativity must start from dialog with the order, in language, in communication and in the community. Provoke a new consciousness emergence, a collective game strategy. After all, playing is an activity proper to human beings and tests that virtue that makes them privileged in nature: the ability to analyse a situation, weigh pros and cons and finally decide.

We need, as warned by Flusser [10], to invert the point of view when analysing the image. Not under the aspect that is usually given to detachment from reality, but from the need to ask what the image projects towards the world. Seek to break instrumental limits and implement ways to overcome obstacles in obtaining feedback and engagement. Refactor and reenchant are the available tools. Software, machines and devices will continue to be complex, but experimentation and integration can clear these conjectures.

Conceptual shifts can be listed at this moment as potentially revolutionary in the practice of architectural design, as a direct digital technologies dissemination result. The focus of the act of designing is no longer the object design and becomes the programming of processes that manage this object. In representation processes, the projective design strategy gives way to the construction of parameterized models, which opens up the possibility of experimentation and testing of the model before its effective construction [19].

Technology is, and can be, the guide of this thought, as long as we do not privilege its output. Computers are not here to give us answers, but they are tools for asking questions [15].

Real literacy in relation to systems goes far beyond attempts to understand their functionality, but to reveal contextual aspects and their consequences. Guiding for information production process awareness.

The designing gesture should not be held hostage to the idiosyncrasies addition linked to a flow of pre-existing forms, but should follow a similar path to what Koolhas [29] proposes, that there is a technological awareness inherent in the very modernization of the process and its realization. Therefore, we must be interested not only in how things are and what they mean but also in how they become real and how this real is produced.

Architects can no longer rely on the representation domain for resistance and control regarding the profession position; new ways of thinking, processing and finally refactoring and reinventing the profession are needed.

2.5 Storytelling: architecture and the image diffusion

As part of the subject, we will deal with a practical experience through storytelling. The faculty of architecture and urbanism at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora is an academic unit like many others in Brazil dedicated to training future professionals in the field. One of the biggest perceived difficulties is the creativity associated with technological resources; most of them cannot describe the process or express their ideas in different media.

A couple of weeks back, in a classroom filled with architecture and urbanism students, an architecture teacher introduced the topic of artificial intelligence, authorship and its potential impact on the design field.

In order to introduce a debate on the progress of instruments such as artificial intelligence and creativity, it was proposed that each of them develop an image of a dream project, such as a house, describing it on open platforms such as Midjourney. Midjourney is a text-to-image generator powered by artificial intelligence. The tool operates within Discord app and works collaboratively. The choice of the tool was due to the results closest to the ideas formulated by the students.

They could make use of other reference images, and also use sketches and drawings to begin from a starting point for the image generation. The students were initially sceptical, but the teacher explained how AI-powered platforms like Midjourney could revolutionize the way architects and designers create and visualize their projects.

To illustrate the point, the teacher assigned the class a creative task: each student was asked to create an image of their dream house using Midjourney The students dove into the task with enthusiasm, experimenting with different design elements and features. Some students imagined fantastical scenarios, like a floating castle in the clouds or a treehouse village nestled in a dense forest. Others dreamed up their ideal homes, complete with all the features and amenities they desired.

As part of the assignment, each student had to create a client profile for their project. They had to consider the physical aspects of the design, as well as the personal tastes and behaviour of the supposed client. This helped the students to learn how to think about the needs and wants of their clients, and how to design spaces that would meet those needs.

After creating their designs, the students used Midjourney to generate images. The final step of the assignment was to shuffle the images and try to guess each image’s author. This was a fun and challenging way for the students to test their skills and see how their designs compared to their classmates.

As the class progressed, the teacher encouraged the students to think about how AI could be used to enhance the design process and to consider the ethical implications of relying on technology to create images.

The students realized the potential of AI to enhance their creativity and were excited about the possibilities and obstacles for the future of their profession. They left the classroom with a new understanding of how AI could be used to augment their skills and help them create even more innovative and unexpected designs, while maintaining a critical position on the consequences of such instruments.

3. Conclusions

The ultra-mediated computational universe can become dangerous according to several types of research when it is no longer a device of heuristics and possibilities, and becomes an ideology that privileges information, technique, access to these facilities and the image over the rest of all things. Decisions, design and work gradually become semi-autonomous. The virtual is interwoven in experimentation ways in increasingly abstract forms, but simultaneously intentional. Data are said to be disembodied but stained somewhere.

Indeed, if there has been a digital revolution in the last five decades as we are led to believe, a large part of this revolution was a visualization revolution, or to be more exact, a revolution in how images are produced. A production mode that actually profoundly changes the modes of distribution and manipulation of images. Databases, digital models, multimedia presentations and others, are all more than ways of organizing data, ways of visualizing data. In the evolution of computer, we went from the calculation for the image through computer graphics to the image for communication through multimedia computers. And if the best-case scenario comes true, we will move from communication to conversational (or the truly dialogic) with the computer taken as a tool of indeterminacy [19].

With each new version, the tendency is that the language becomes more and more simplified; the software gives a direction towards more friendly and intuitive interfaces, less apparent buttons, less text to read, more patterns and more tutorials instilled in the step-by-step of how to do it. Maybe this will lead to a trend towards a trivialization of a technical, aesthetic, linguistic and conceptual order or on the contrary, will it expand the possibilities exponentially and will new forms of production and interpretation emerge provided by these facilities?

Reject technology is impossible, but the ability to articulate and design need not be limited only to their means. It is necessary to aim for syncretism, a reasonable vision and the capacities of each one to act dialogically for a legitimate mobilization. Focus on the here and now, one step back to a future better jump.

Acknowledgments

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.