How have you visually interpreted the festival theme of Living Machines?
What were your initial influences and source materials?
The theme Living Machines sparked many discussions and interest in the studio. With artificial intelligence making waves within the creative / design scene, generative design tools and intelligence algorithms are raising questions about our relevance as designers and the longevity of our profession. Can a festival identity generate itself? What is the role of a designer when technology is able to produce campaigns? How can we use generative systems to aid our changing profession? Graphic design has survived and embraced the computer, web, code, motion, and AI is another branch we can grow on.
ST–DUO loves contradictions and extremes, as two quite different designers we like to explore the realms of the inbetween. The terms ‘Living’ and ‘Machine’ stood out to us as one of these differences and we set out to find the point of overlap. Where do the symbolisms of the living (organic, detailed, random, autonomous, flow) collide with the machine (structures, systematic, information, connection, data, circuits)? And how can we address the questions of how we classify consciousness? For us this kept coming back to communication, so we were looking for an organic form that communicates like a machine, and we came to Mushrooms.