One Sunday morning I was melting my brain on Instagram when I came across this post:
Among the deluge of AI-generated interiors, the Uber wealthy designer homes (somehow less believable than the AI), and the academics with personalities I follow, this post leapt out at me. Initially, I couldn’t work out why. It looks like any other apartment, tiny home, or holiday home, and I wondered why this post of all of them stood out. Then it hit me, the image is relatable - this looks like a house people actually live in. And I want to live here.
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Within this observation lies an obvious truth about two contrary things, a) Instagram (and AI) has given me completely unrealistic expectations about interior design, and b) humans are attracted to imperfection. In the photo, you can see imperfect lighting, a small kitchen space, and nice but not fancy furniture. I can also see that the kitchen does not bear many of the hallmarks of ‘lux’ interior style such as parquet flooring, high stud ceilings, wainscoting, or crown mouldings. And yet it seems I’m drawn to this room for other reasons. This post is about the qualities of colour/texture, cosiness and the delightful surprise of realistic design in an imperfect reality.
The style and design of this space may not be for everyone but whoever staged it has made some classic design decisions. For those desperate to upgrade their home but can’t afford big changes, some helpful hints may be below.
Colour & texture
Colours and textures contribute to the perceived dimensions and mood of a room. Reflectivity is a key theme in this room because the walls, ceiling, cabinetry, light fixtures and furniture are all made from shiny materials. The dark high gloss paint reflects and extends the space like a mirror, making the space feel bigger. In fact many of the decisions made for this room were for optical distortion. For example, the ceiling paint is the same colour as the walls which extends the walls to the ceiling with no obvious demarcation and again fools the eye into enlarging the room. However, you might be wondering about the choice of black paint in this lineup. Dark paint can also unexpectedly make a room look bigger, not smaller. Combined with a high gloss finish this colour has worked wonders.
Cosy
The colour palette is giving cosy dark academia, a trendy aesthetic in the interior design world. Dark academia is dark and moody with a particular colour palette represented above. House Digest provided this description,
Dark academia is an aesthetic that has risen out of the fixation of the old, prestigious ivy league look, such as Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge — hence the name, according to Book Riot. Other pieces of media that produce a dark academic aesthetic include the "Harry Potter" books and films, "Dead Poets Society," "Sherlock Holmes" in all its interpretations, etc. Think tweed, leather armchairs, roaring fireplaces, chaise lounges, secret staircases, and age-old libraries.
And I love thinking about dead poets and secret staircases however this image…BUT HOLD ON, LET’S LOOK AT THAT INSTAGRAM IMAGE AGAIN…
The surprise twist of this post was when I learned that this Instagram image was also AI. Like a boomer discovering podcasts and then how many podcasts there are, I honestly couldn’t believe it. This fact only came to light because I trawled through the comments (which were in French) on Instagram. Someone asked how @aude.jolijour generated her images and she responded with, “merci infiniment. Je dicte des prompts très précis à l’intelligence artificielle et j’y travaille jusqu’à obtenir ce que je veux” (translation: thank you so much. I dictate very precise prompts to the artificial intelligence and I work on them until I get what I want). I was going to talk next about imperfection but this discovery has been like swerving before a cow crossing the road at midnight and we are now driving into some field with a fence dangling from the windshield.
We now have to talk about AI and interior design. If you look at this image there are many tells if you start analysing it. Firstly, there are two ovens. The raised one in the foreground has about nine knobs - for what? There’s clearly no stove. This oven is also warped in shape and tilted out instead of sitting flush. The view outside is nonsensical with a fence, random foliage and several unidentifiable shapes. The pattern on the rug is not a pattern at all and is asymmetrical. There is an object sitting on the top right-hand cabinets that is trying very hard to be a clock. I wonder if it tells time any better than the one I forgot to circle on the other side of the room. You know, above the… metal jellyfish dream catcher?
After a cup of tea and a small reflection, I decided realistic design is realistic, not real and in some cases that doesn’t matter too much. If you are merely searching for interior design insporage, the image just needs to be real’s adjective, realistic. AI can be a great tool to develop new design ideas based on images the AI model has been trained on but I guess I was just thrown by how realistic it was. After seeing so many very obviously AI-generated images, my expectations were low and I trusted my eyes to pick up the telltale signs. As I said in my now unbelievably prescient first paragraph, my Instagram feed is full of AI-generated images and I was fine with that. However, discovering what I thought was a real image in my feed was thrilling because it brought me back to my world. This whole experience has made me realise how much AI has infiltrated social media and what an incoherent experience social media has become.
The best AI art is in this way the most unnerving. I feel like my trust has been compromised. Convincing AI emanates desperate plausibility and throws every trick it has learned at you, trying to convince you it is real without ever knowing reality. Whether or not the AI’s embedded understanding of its subject is close to ours, the real world is not actively trying to persuade you it is real. My pattern has been to lose interest once I find out an image has been generated by AI because I feel deceived or as if someone is trying to deceive me. What I want is to see is human artwork, human thoughts and human creative ideas. That is the most inspiring to me.
In summary, AI is just a tool, not a replacement for entertainment, creativity, or intellectual engagement created by humans. People worry that AI will replace creative workers but I am not so sure that AI’s impact will be as salient as that. Given my reaction to being shown a hyperrealistic image generated by AI, I think AI has a place in the creative world but not a replacement. Does this mean I’m going to delete every AI-based account in my Instagram feed? No, but I am going to do something else instead of going on social media. Books have helped ground me in my own world because at least there, I have the agency to choose to be in someone else’s reality…
Side note: I left the top half of this article exactly as it was before I discovered the AI deception and it makes for some pretty weird reading going back over it. Also if you want to have a look at the keywords I put into Mid Journey to generate the image below here is the link.
Dose of wonder this week
Auckland: Aotearoa Art Fair 18-21st of April
Wellington: The Wellington Art show 19th-21st of April
Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, FEB 11 – MAY 12, 2024
San Fransisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, April 6–October 6, 2024
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Fascinating Kim. So discerning! Actually TWO kitchen stoves? Wow...
Fantastic piece Kim. I had no idea about the AI invasion of interior design. You write so well!