Diffusions in Architecture: Artificial Intelligence and Image Generators
by Matias del Campo, Lev Manovich
Role Play
Elena Manferdini
Identity is a mirror that reflects the different cultural and social factors that shape us as human beings. It refers to a person’s sense of self, meaning how one views themselves as compared to other people. Identity has always been a shifting concept, not immune from fictional narratives, stereotypes, and appropriations. But the recent rise of our digital alternatives has drastically changed how we see ourselves.
Once upon a time, identity used to have a tangible manifestation because it could not be meaningful without the acknowledgment of others. Today, social media has fostered online communities. Our thoughts and most intimate feelings have been uploaded. Text messages, pictures, voices, and geographical coordinates have been compiled into an interconnected set of shared data that constitutes our digital neighborhood. Therefore, our sense of self is split between who we are in real life and how we represent ourselves online. Avatars, face filters, and deepfakes are just the beginning of the manifestations of a larger global transition of our sense of self into the cloud.
The digital turn has forced us to redefine our on‐line persona, challenged the constructs of who we are as individuals, and granted all of us the possibility of being reimagined. Today, identity is filled with new risks and potentials that come along with role‐playing. 2022 has been the year of text‐to‐image artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Midjourney, Disco Diffusion, and ...