Exploring pluriversal design narratives: GenAI Workshop + Discussion

Exploring pluriversal design narratives in the era of Generative AI (GenAI) is a collaborative workshop, discussion, and exhibition, hosted at RMIT that questions the complexity of pluriversal design amidst the growing influence of western-centric GenAI technologies in design. 

The Collaborative Workshop (4:30pm to 6:00pm)

In this workshop, you will gain hands-on experience creating a pluriversal training data set to generate image prompting text-to-image GenAI and learn critical prompting approaches to visualise representations of cultural artefacts. Collectively, we hope to create a more inclusive GenAI data set together, and explore the use of this data to produce more pluriversal GenAI images. 

The Discussion (6.00pm to 7.00pm)

This discussion brings together GenAI-based creative practitioners to explore the negative impact of GenAI's 'visual flattening effect', and discuss ways of countering GenAI's inherent biases. Together we hope to question how can we develop a critical approach to examining GenAI visualisations? How can we challenge these visual flattening of cultural representations through the creation of more pluriversal data sets? Is this possible?

Dr Fanny Suhendra: Fanny is a lecturer in Swinburne's School of Design and Architecture. She teaches communication design and research methodology in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Her research investigates the role of communication design in social and political campaigns.

Dr Linus Tan: Linus is a design and architecture researcher in the School of Design and Architecture at Swinburne University of Technology. He investigates how designers think, act, and learn, and how using Generative AI change the way designers and design teams think, act, and learn.

Dr Nicola St John: Nicola St John is an award-winning researcher and design lecturer. Her research explores cultural perspectives of design and the value of communication design education and enterprise within Aboriginal communities.

Georgina Nolan: Georgie is a designer, researcher and educator based in Naarm. With a background in graphic design, media and communications, her research and practice is focused around bringing together processes of designing and futuring to co-create pluriversal futures. Her primary interest lies in dissecting the concept of "futures" within design, delving into the ethical implications embedded within these notions. Currently, she is navigating designed futures through the lens of space/placemaking in her doctoral studies at RMIT. Alongside her research, Nolan has a personal design business and teaches as a sessional lecturer at Glasgow School of Art's ‘Innovation School’ and at RMIT in the Communication Design program.

Benjamin Thomson: A commercial artist / designer / educator on Wurundjeri Land. Focussing on an absurdist mix of futurism, neurodivergence, class and Nu Metal through a visual digital medium since 2004.

The Exhibition (3.00pm to 8.00pm)

The outcomes generated through the workshop will be exhibited digitally and reveal the biases and ‘flattening’ of GenAI data and how pluriversal data sets can work to disrupt dominant data sets. Alongside these digital representations will be work from students at Swinburne and RMIT who are also exploring questions of bias and pluriversal design through the use of GenAI.

The workshop, talk, and exhibition is hosted by

• Swinburne University of Technology, School of Design and Architecture, and
• RMIT University, School of Design.

Image by Benjamin Thomson.