A pot : experiments with clay + gen AI
digital ceramics, 2024 - ongoing
This ongoing collaboration with ceramicist Anna Andersen explores generative AI as a design tool in ceramic practice. Using the archetypal prompt "a pot"—a form humans have created since prehistoric times—we test both corporate and open-source AI models that generate 3D models from image and text prompts. Our central question asks if generative AI can be used to enhance our creative practice without undercutting the hands-on, material knowledge that defines ceramic work.
Our process positions AI as a creative support tool, not as a tool for optimization or a replacement for human craftsmanship. In the studio we generate and critically evaluate hundreds of AI outputs, selecting forms that we feel have creative potential. Each AI-generated digital sketch is a starting point; they are altered, remixed and interpreted through our design sensibilities, our understanding of clay's material properties, structural limitations, and firing behaviors. The meaningful work happens in translating the digital to the physical through a hybrid process of clay 3D printing and hand-sculpting, skills we have each developed over years of practice. In A pot, our approach to the work tests how emerging technologies could expand creative possibilities within traditional ways of working that center tactility, intuition and the human.
A pot has recieved development support from Nationalbankens Jubilaeumsfond.
Our process positions AI as a creative support tool, not as a tool for optimization or a replacement for human craftsmanship. In the studio we generate and critically evaluate hundreds of AI outputs, selecting forms that we feel have creative potential. Each AI-generated digital sketch is a starting point; they are altered, remixed and interpreted through our design sensibilities, our understanding of clay's material properties, structural limitations, and firing behaviors. The meaningful work happens in translating the digital to the physical through a hybrid process of clay 3D printing and hand-sculpting, skills we have each developed over years of practice. In A pot, our approach to the work tests how emerging technologies could expand creative possibilities within traditional ways of working that center tactility, intuition and the human.
A pot has recieved development support from Nationalbankens Jubilaeumsfond.
A pot with handles, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay.
Vase with necks, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay.
Double Amphora, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay.
Round container, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted mixed clay, glaze.
Detail.
Left, 3D model of Round Container; Right, AI-generated 3D model parts that we incorporated into our vessel design.
A pot with handles (v2), 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay, glaze..
A cup with handles, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay with engobe wash.
Amphora, 3D-printed and hand-sculpted red clay with engobe wash.
AI-generated model of “a pot” - what we consider an initial “digital sketch.”
AI-generated model of “a pot”.
AI-generated model of “a pot”.
Some of our first AI-generated 3D model tests.
Glazing one of the models, 3D-printed in red clay.
Beaker, 3D-printed red clay, slip wash, glaze.