For their New Year's reception Süderelbe AG approached me for an AI generated invitationcard.
The card addresses the question of how our society and its communication is changing as the cost of media production dramatically decreases. In the age of generative AI, there is a real possibility that "what was once considered culture could be wiped out by technology", as Max Horkheimer once pointedly put it. The danger is that people will become eager data producers in an era of "digital surveillance capitalism" dominated by technology companies, according to Shoshana Zuboff. Max Horkheimer's call to be "theoretical pessimists and practical optimists" requires a sober examination of the potential dangers of technology, while maintaining optimism that a positive future is possible through conscious action and design. The need to fear the worst is accompanied by an active striving for the best.
For the illustration, I worked entirely with AI, using StableDiffusion to create individual image areas in a uniform watercolor style and then stitching them together with Photoshop. The resulting collage was used again as input to unify the final image into a whole with AI.
