1001 in 1

Immersive Exhibition with Adil Bokhari and Miro Roman, Meteora++, ETH Zurich, 2023, curated by Lathouse and exhibited in the Zentralwäscherei Zurich. 1001 in 1 night ventures into a realm where ancient stories meet the digital age, exploring the themes of storytelling, generativity and alienation in the context of contemporary AI. In an immersive installation, visitors get transported to a list of various places emerging from the latent space of today’s most prolific neural nets – with the stories of 1001 nights whispering in the background. They are the outcome of an alternate ways to play the latest generation of Large Language Models and Text-to-Image Models: With the help of coded prompting cascades, schemas, prisms, and formulas, all stories from 1001 night undergo a process from being programmatically rewritten by GPT-4 API; these culminate in detailed descriptions of settings, which are interpretated by a Text-To-Image Model. The exhibit playfully addresses how designers and architects might work and play with the latest faces of AI, as well as surfacing pertinent questions the future role of creativity and inventiveness, the relationship of the probable and the plausible, and storytelling as neverending source of imagination.