The Information Architecture and Intelligence Design Program questions what defines intelligence and how technological forces are mobilized to override or displace pre-existing systems of creation. Under a technocratic regime, how do hierarchies of intelligence come into being, and which forms are protected, cultivated, or sidelined? Within current rhetoric and debates surrounding emerging technologies, what does it mean to describe machinic production as superintelligence, and how might we challenge the still-predominant Californian ideology that mobilizes this notion? At a time when automation appears inevitable and consciousness is projected through technological mirages, this inquiry proposes a reactivation of intelligence through energetic and creative transfer, examining how these processes intersect with technological systems. The Program also reflects on the foundations of an ethics of AI development, recognizing that within the competitive logic of an intelligence race, artificial intelligence often functions as a screen for dynamics of power, extraction, efficiency, and control.
Corollary to these critical inquiries, the Intelligence Design Lab functions as a central hub for experimental design practice, exploring production of new techniques leveraging the emergent medium provisionally termed intelligence under the sign of psychic interface: design of human-centered AI applications in software and beyond. The Lab integrates a virtual studio for sharing knowledge and work in progress, and collaborates with experts and technicians in its pursuit of maximal engagement and application of agentic tools. Members will depart with state-of-the-art project work in their chosen idiom expressly crafted through both direct enlistment of machine intelligence and interrogation of its status as technique.
Formally pathbreaking and natively transdisciplinary, the Program welcomes undergraduates, graduates, and mid-career professionals in design, architecture, digital media, computer science, and related fields.