“THE WORLD IS BURNING… but the wallpaper is beautiful!”

Wallpaper for the End of the World (crisiscurated.com) represents my first exploration into using artificial intelligence to reinterpret my own archives. This project takes decades of my climate crisis documentation, originally captured for publications like National Geographic and The New York Times, and transforms those images through machine learning algorithms into intricate wallpaper patterns to be downloaded, printed, and pasted anywhere.

Starting with this image archive as the primary prompt, with only a single text addition for each piece (limited strictly to one historical wallpaper pattern name such as damask, chinoiserie, or toile de jouy), I employ a method that prioritizes visual content over verbal descriptions of the crisis. This approach allows the generative AI I work with to engage more directly with the visual language of my photography. The resulting wallpaper patterns, capable of an infinite and seamless tiling effect, emerge as a synthesis of documented moments and AI interpretation that is intrinsically tied to the original photographic evidence while evolving the output to a new aesthetic and distribution channel.

By offering these patterns as free downloads, I'm extending my archive's reach and impact, inviting a broader audience to engage with these transmuted images of crisis in their everyday spaces. The integration of climate change imagery into domestic and public environments, from boardrooms to bedrooms, creates a persistent, if veiled, reminder of our environmental challenges, blurring the lines between aesthetic appreciation and ecological awareness.

Full project at crisiscurated.com