Hasta La Ideas

Artists Kite and Alisha B Wormsley have created a series of benches in Brooklyn clad in black mortar and covered in AI-generated mosaics informed by dreams collected from the public.

Located in a square in Downtown Brooklyn, the project consists of a series of benches and steps covered in tile mosaic patterns, derived from a website called Cosmologyscape, where participants entered dreams into “dream journal chatbot”.

The resulting benches were inscribed with interpretations of the entries generated through AI programming.

The project is a result of  Kite and Alisha B Wormsley‘s collaborative work focused on the intersection of art and technology through a Black and Indigenous lens, as well as Kite’s research and writing work, which focuses on Indigenous culture’s input in the development of AI technology.

Clustered in a circle, the public installations consist of four, organic-shaped benches encircling a tree planter and an “offering bowl”.

Each piece is covered in black mortar, which the artist said symbolises the night sky. Each piece was covered by a patchwork of colourful glass tile mosaics and small planting beds.

The mosaics are informed by versions of symbols Kite and Wormsley selected from their ancestral Lakota, African and African-American cultures

The bench’s organic forms were developed by Kite, Wormsley and creative studio School – which created the website and AI algorithms for the project – by following the curves of the graphs generated by the data set collected from the dreams.

This “data” was the result of a group of main artists, as well the public, who entered  “daydreams, visions, lucid dreams, or nightmares” into a chatbot on the Cosmologyscape website.

Dreamers were given a series of questions and prompts during the process, such as questions about the level of reality of the dream, sensations experiences and emotions associated with the content.

An AI algorithm developed by School then associated the written copy of these dreams with Kite and Wormsley’s symbols to generate a “digital quilt square” for the participant, which became a part of a large digital tapestry on the website.

The digital quilt square also generated a tea recipe, represented by pixelated plant symbols, containing herbs addressing the emotions associated with each person’s entry.

For instance – chamomile is generated for anxiety.

Several of the resulting symbols from the collective, digital quilt were then chosen for the benches, where passersby are encouraged to rest and daydream themselves.

Selections from the quilt also line the surrounding steps of the plaza.

According to the artists, the project was informed by dream work, which explores the act of dreaming as a radical cultural and political tool.

“For hundreds of years, Black and Indigenous communities and numerous cultures around the world have used dreaming to listen to the past and reimagine the future,” said the team.

“Cosmologyscape seeks to reinvigorate individual and communal dreaming practices.”

It was selected to commemorate the 50th anniversary of New York City-based arts organisation Creative Time.

The photography is by Parker Calvert/CKA courtesy of Creative Time.

The Cosmologyscape installation is on view until 3 November 2024 at the Plaza at 300 Ashland in Brooklyn. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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