TEXT to TEAPOT

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ABSTRACT – EN

In the past year alone, the impact of artificial intelligence on our lives has grown exponentially, becoming a common and ongoing topic of discussion. It has long been the case that AIs (Artificial Intelligences) have been responsible for the music we listen to, the chats we engage in, and other tools we tend not to notice. But with the emergence of AI in the creative sphere, for the production of texts, images, or other purposes, a strong debate has developed on their practical and moral impact. If in technical fields, such as in the production of scientific and academic texts, these neural networks are shown to be promising but far from efficient, in areas such as illustration and photography they have produced strong opposition for their extensive and unregulated use.

One of the first questions I asked myself regarding this phenomenon was the most instinctive: can AI replace us? A question that, if it once appeared as a cliché of dystopian fiction, has now become very concrete for a significant part of the creative community on the web. In order to test the limits of this tool, I decided to observe if and how AI could substitute the presence of a product designer in the design and creation of an object, that is, to give physical form to an idea or concept without human assistance. For the purposes of developing this test, I focused on an application of AI that is still highly experimental, namely the production of 3D models on textual instructions, trying to reproduce Martin Newell’s Utah teapot from 1975: one of the first objects, and the most iconic, to be reproduced virtually is here brought back into the physical world.

Whether by the paths I have taken in my research, by the means of designer and programmer, or by the text-to-3D technologies that are developing in parallel, the result I have achieved is of a level that cannot yet replace the professional figure of the 3D modeller or, even less so, the designer.

My project consists of a web diary containing reflections, notes and excerpts of conversations with the AI, the story of a relationship between the designer and the neural network. The digital story is accompanied by the result of this collaboration, the physical reproduction of an unusable and unrecognisable Utah teapot. These two elements, the story and the product, are testimonies to the limits and capabilities of a technology that has the potential to overturn the role of the designer, the concept of creative production, and the world.