The Whiff of AI Aesthetics

Dream Logic: Episode 1

Two years ago, I started experimenting with generative AI. Not out of excitement — but fear.

Fear about my job.

About how creativity might be revalued.

About the shifting line between human and machine as we accelerate into a new, and possibly unsettling, era.

Yet sometimes a new tool reveals something unexpected about how we work or how we see.

Today, my friend Kirby Ferguson and I are sharing the first episode of Dream Logic, a slow series exploring the shifting horizons of creative work, beginning with generative AI.

It’s the start of a weekly conversation: musings, artist interviews, and long looks into the strange, evolving landscape of creative innovations.

Episode 1, titled The Whiff of AI Aesthetics, is out now. A monologue, featuring me. Most of what we see in these tools today carries a faint, inescapable stank — of something synthetic, something thoughtless and ethically fraught.

But maybe that’s not the whole story.

I reflect on the unexpected freedoms — and failures —of this immature medium, and what I’ve noticed among peers in the design world. What it makes possible. What it doesn’t.

It’s an open question and an invitation to other creatives who might help shape what comes next.

Design note: Each episode features a character I hyper-collaged in AI, mapped over Zoom recorded video — a visual experiment in what's currently possible. Still image made using Stable Diffusion AI; Video mapping with Runway.

Special shoutout to my husband Neil Nisbet for the soundbed and the graphic talent of Yeun Kim on title design.

-Karin