The fashion business world, in following trends, is currently obsessing over the following questions: how will AI change the way we humans experience or buy fashion in the future? What new tools will AI offer fashion consumers? Will there be any need for designers at all, when trends are spotted by algorithms and the next season is calculated accordingly? Such pedestrian questions, it seems, are motivated by a fundamental narcissism: the industry sees a reflection of itself in the future, but it fails to consider the paradigmatic shift AI could introduce to the system—a radical restructuring of the field wherein fashion (as we know it) ceases to exist. Rather than partake in an anxious discussion about an industry’s growth or obsolescence at the hands of AI, however, T’ai Smith will start with a more speculative scenario and set of questions about a potential future in which AI gains consciousness—when it has an artifactual mind. Will AI ever see itself in a mirrored (fashion) plate? And if AI begins to self-individuate, will AI desire fashion? Will AI have its own mirror stage, and hence, in all of its Ego-ID contradictions, provide the well of needs and desires required by capitalism? Or, will (fashion) capitalism peter out, when AI’s lustless super-ego takes over?
- Audio Research Program >
- T’ai Smith