Eye 105 – Volume #27

At a time when people are seeing Artificial Intelligence as either a get-rich scheme or an existential threat, Marian Bantjes’ article ‘Artificial idiot’ is a useful corrective to the tsunami of commentary. Bantjes has taken the time to investigate the processes required to coax something interesting out of Midjourney, and has found a typically novel way to incorporate the application into her own practice. Along the way she has discussed the issue with other experimenters, notably Pum Lefebure (Design Army) and Jonathan Hoefler, and has come up with some provocative and fascinating observations.

Meanwhile, quizzed by Louise Sandhaus in our Reputations interview, brand supremo Brian Collins has a more Tiggerish take on AI: ‘We must now become as fluent with AI as we are with colour, shape, form, type, glyphs, motion, sound and words.’

Dennis Gould’s practice stems from the early 1990s, a time when a poet could become a printer with the purchase of an obsolete proofing press. As mainstream graphic design entered a turbulent period of adjustment to the emerging digital world, Gould pursued an aesthetic and political agenda rooted in earlier, more analogue (and revolutionary) times.

‘The quiet confidence of Tomoko Miho’ is the latest in Elizabeth Resnick’s series of eloquent profiles from recent graphic design history, while ‘The power of physical books’ takes the temperature of current practice, with a detailed overview of the considered and typographically resonant work of Sonya Dyakova’s Atelier Dyakova.