A pot : experiments with clay + gen AI
digital ceramics, 2024 - ongoing
This project is an ongoing collaboration between myself and ceramicist Anna Andersen. It explores the use of generative AI as a design tool in ceramic practice. Our central question is whether generative AI can enhance our creative practice without undermining the hands-on, material knowledge that defines ceramic work.
Our process positions AI as a creative support tool, not 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 have creative potential. Each AI-generated digital sketch serves as a starting point; it is then altered, remixed, and interpreted through our design sensibilities and our understanding of clay's material properties, limitations, and firing behaviors. The meaningful work occurs 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 on tactility, intuition, and the human.
A pot has recieved development support from Nationalbankens Jubilaeumsfond.
Our process positions AI as a creative support tool, not 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 have creative potential. Each AI-generated digital sketch serves as a starting point; it is then altered, remixed, and interpreted through our design sensibilities and our understanding of clay's material properties, limitations, and firing behaviors. The meaningful work occurs 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 on 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.