Edition: 04-D2C
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–test –creative
Midjourney Job ID #
ad893eaa-cceb-4b22-8b72-fbabcf1af0be
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1009052948145377350/1009052948820676700/1024244484709564446
Date Commenced
22.09.22
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Recycled image prompt
Adam Brown – Author’s Response
When one asks a probabilistic machine what the future might look like it has a pretty realistic idea of what we might expect – it imagines our notions of futurity, and mixes in a little probability. Because it is very well read, it understands better what Peter Cook, Bjarke Ingels and Patrick Schumacher think they are up to in the Arabian Peninsula than they do themselves. It knows full well – and entirely reasonably – that megaproject projects such as Neom arise from devastation – it doesn’t shrink from the economic and biopolitical underpinning of the architectural megaproject.
From these images we can deduce that Patrick Schumacher, whose work some of this resembles, and who has admitted – controversially, to using AI in new project designs – he must have seen these kinds of results and made a conscious effort to screen them out. Denial is just across the Gulf (sorry.)
The project may well be abandoned, this would not be unusual.
One feature of the current global debt crisis is that a state only has to signal its will to be ruthlessly destructive for global markets to smile upon it. Projects can be pitched and left unfinished, but the willingness to demolish property and disperse communities signal the will to go for growth at any cost. See the HS2 project in London – a 27-billion-pound hole in the centre of the city, for maybe another 10 years – who’s waiting?
There is no chance of Neom ever being completed – Peter Cook admits as such – but the devastation wrought in laying the foundations and clearing the land will be enough to generate enough capital in the present to build bits of it. The project may well be abandoned, this would not be unusual.
The machine knows that Rem Koolhaas sketched colossal zones of obliteration in London and Beijing and the world gave him money and status for his boldness. It knows Skopje was rebuilt as a hyper-Brutalist wonder after the 1967 earthquake, and the bombing of Tokyo gave rise to some of the West’s most prevalent images of futurity. Does it know if the contracts for the reconstruction of Ukraine’s cities have already been signed?
Does it know if the contracts for the reconstruction of Ukraine’s cities have already been signed?
The algorithm integrates a Marxist notion of capitalist ‘creative destruction’ – because such images and narratives are also in the dataset. To view these images as apocalyptic is to ignore that they merely show the whole picture. As Bernard Cache understands, architecture is the act of framing – the difference between these images and the CGI renderings of Neom or any other architectural megaproject is that the necessary devastation is included in the frame. The algorithm is showing us both the machine and its output, objectively.
With New York enveloped in smoke and dust from colossal Canadian wildfires, this is what the city looks like as I write. Midjourney has imagined the present! It has no idea how to extrapolate – it only knows what a subject within the dominant visuo-political culture that coded it expects to see when they attempt to extrapolate based on their limited knowledge of global conditions. Everything it does is therefore very much in the here and now. We may well look at these images, and imagine it is extrapolating – because this is how we have been accultured to look at images – but it is vital to understand that all this machine can do is remix an existing library of dominant visual and textual references.
It is incapable of imagining a sustainable or inclusive ‘future’ because this content is not yet in the dataset.
It is incapable of imagining a sustainable or inclusive ‘future’ because this content is not yet in the dataset. This is why it is showing us NYC – even including a super thin mega-tower looming through the smog of a billion burning native trees. It shows us the future of the capitalist-modernist project as it has already dreamed itself, based on data going back to its very origin. These are images of the present. It’s exactly what I thought I’d see. Give me something I don’t expect.
AB 12-06-2023
Edition: 04-C1A
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–test –creative
Midjourney Job ID #
11a5ddba-dda7-45e8-bc6b-33ef8ca165ff
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1026653306170376273/1026653307118301349/1049653652530401330
Date Commenced
22.09.22
Parent Grid
Edition: 09-B2B
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–ar 2:3 –v 4 (beta)
Midjourney Job ID #
a178ed72-5e38-445a-97f4-b89225ecd613
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1026653306170376273/1026653307118301349/1050222285811884103
Date Commenced
22.09.22
Photo prompt
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Edition: 04-C2B
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–test –creative
Midjourney Job ID #
0dab1222-f25e-466e-9475-6a8602181ada
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1009052948145377350/1009052948820676700/1023909133998624829
Date Commenced
22.09.22
Parent Grid
Edition: 09-B4
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–v 4 –ar 2:3
Midjourney Job ID #
702ae4dc-f4a7-44f5-b840-c1d50e7c4244
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1026653306170376273/1026653307118301349/1050222084401406042
Date Completed
22.09.22
Recycled image prompt
Parent grid
Edition: 08-B1F
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–v 4
Midjourney Job ID #
05d2a4ab-12ab-4367-b45e-d0f2208967f7
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1026653306170376273/1026653307118301349/1049669921115738162
Date Completed
22.09.22
Parent Grid
Edition: 09-A2B
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–ar 3:2–v 4
Midjourney Job ID #
844f5a0b-1a34-432e-82df-33604babecea
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1026653306170376273/1026653307118301349/1050221859800612924
Date Completed
22.09.22
Recycled Image Prompt
Parent Grid
Edition: 04-B3
Future Imperfect
Text prompt
The future of architecture
Parameters
–test –creative
Midjourney Job ID #
619e66d6-eea1-4abc-8224-8d50e54b168d
Prompt Author
Adam Brown
Discord Message Link
https://discord.com/channels/1009052948145377350/1009052948820676700/1024193982370172928
Date Completed
22.09.22
Parent Grid
Production Contact Sheet
The Future Imperfect series
Production Details
Image production dates: 04-10-2022 to 08-12-2022
Editions :: 120
Parent Grids :: 5
First Discord instance:
Image series citation:
Brown, A., Goodwin, M. & Midjourney, “Adam Brown – Future Imperfect,” in Slow Down Time, Goodwin, M. Ed. Melbourne: Word Press, December 6, 2022, http://slowdowntime.com/adam-brown/
Slow Down Time 