The Book Of Visions: A.I Visions
The Book Of Visions project takes its name from a nearly lost 1973 publication of the same name, which collected around 300 responses to a callout for ‘ideas for an alternative society’, gathered under headings like education, housing, ecology, alternative technology, the arts etc. In working with this manuscript, the question arose: WHAT WOULD A NEW BOOK OF VISIONS LOOK LIKE? The project is a container for individiual and collective practices, approaches and artworks that speak to this question.
‘A.I Visions’ is an experiment in A.I hauntology, using a dystopian new wave of technology to re-imagine the lost utopian dreams of a former generation, with often eerie and unpredictable results. It is an ongoing project, realized both in the studio and participatory workshops. A new area of research relates to the question - 'what would a book of visions for A.I look like? - what utopian dreams for its own future might artificial intellingence come up with?
The featured image uses A.I to visualize idea #69 from the original Book of Visions. The entry comes from a charity calling itself the Motorway Conversion Trust, whose aims are 1) to end all motorway and bypass construction, 2) to plough up existing motorways and convert them to vegetable plots and 3) to preserve 50 miles of motorway as a monument to technological fetishism.