DEV Community: Roberto Farruggio

Why artists are worried about generative AI

Roberto Farruggio — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 02:19:30 +0000

“They didn't burn the libraries — they trained them with AI”

Craft and Authorship Devalued

Adobe was built for productivity, it's not doing the work for you like an OpenAI subscription generating both text and imagery through prompts. Commercial AI services are now devaluing labor, craft, skill, and almost anything made or written by hand. Authorship is sinking.

People now find it acceptable to generate work with a prompt, with random art materials they didn't make, and without any ability to make their art. This profoundly changes the meaning of making art and disrupts all digital art. It all becomes Dadaism. Not all artists decide to go Dada with Duchamp's use of randomness and chance. It’s obscuring the meaning of all new digital art with a diminished sense of guessing what is real and what isn’t.

Whose work is it? Permission, provenance and the library

Would David Lynch be okay with people generating an avatar of himself on behalf of his estate? I don’t think so, I even asked Claude themselves and they said no. There must be permission first, it’s not an all you can eat buffet of borrowing others.

Hayao Miyazaki's view on people generating his art style strongly opposed generative AI as an “insult to life itself”, it’s about preserving his work and the Ghibli team's legacy, it's his choice if he allows a technology company to reappropriate his work and not anyone else's.

Can someone please tell Sam Altman to ask for permission or wait a hundred years til it's in the public domain? If major publishers change their mind because authors and artists are being taken advantage of, could it impact OpenAI or Anthropic? Maybe until they find the right lawyer.

We’re entering a provenance, attribution, and appropriation nightmare of who said what and who made what. When a library gets trained into a model, you lose the chain of who wrote it. References without understanding, art school 101 becoming the whole internet.

The business model is trained on everyone's work for free, no fee up front, then sells it back as the means of production. This is precisely how it’s replacing the skills and jobs of production. This is essentially the ethos of the WGA fight at civilizational scale.

Naomi Klein described it as a “humanity surplus” where archives, libraries, authorship as a whole are told humans aren’t needed, it implies people are working for free. The libraries are all already dust, with the alarming peer to peer pressure in staying quiet about it as an elite tribe of twitter accounts convince people how to do business, proclaiming AI must be prebuilt into everything, while risking a possible impact of a third of our economy if slop falls into flop…

Labor and the creative industries

The writers obviously, and the artists, even the designers, engineers, programmers and coders, nearly all authors involved, all craftsmen involved—the proletariat, are becoming displaced, labor obscured into an industrial wildcard.

One of many industries impacted with the brunt of the damage is the illustrator. People who draw fell into a depression after generating art became commercialised with prompts generating illustrations in a desired art style. Everyone who can draw, paint, render, and everything in between crashing in competition.

Molly Crabapple is an important author and artist based out of Brooklyn, New York, her illustrations are recognised by everyone, and she had a deeply existential moment realising her art style might be reappropriated without her say. Imagine people creating her illustrations that don’t exist, or “finishing” them. It’s simply unacceptable.

Artists were displaced almost immediately after competing with the whole Internet and prompts through AIs generating images. On the other hand, it’s created a renewed appreciation for people who create by hand simultaneously.

It's a bit daunting if you're in art school right now. The entire entertainment industry (including films, music, and video games) are all in a digital-only transition in the middle of a writer's strike across several industries while the OpenAI business model asphyxiates them. Here are the warnings too familiar to us all, the industry is truly shape-shifting and everyone is outpaced by it.

This might be a bit sardonic but a portion of the entire movement of music has funneled its value into an AI defense weapon, with Spotify’s Daniel Ek’s AI defense company ‘Helsing’, a portion of human expression through music ended up being a weapon for war. The music industry is dying because people are struggling with selling it. Spotify does not give you a music file of what you listen to, right? Spotify unfortunately is led by two or three people hoarding labels and publisher's profit, so all of the world's human expression through music is published through a handful of people who lead streaming platforms and channel it into weapons manufacturing while the entertainment industry is in the middle of a precise market collapse tied to creatives.

Don’t get me started with Suno. We’re talking about people with no ability creating a zombie apocalypse music festival here. It’s fostering the laziest and robotic sounding art I’ve ever heard. Spotify actually recently removed 75 million AI pieces, finally, all AI generated art should be separated unless the artists are sourcing their own materials/assets in original compositions.

If the artist finds and picks out the materials or creates them from scratch and then uses automated tools, that’s acceptable. If you build your own tools and use your own assets, even better. If the automated tools are the preset settings of a commercial tool, then you're sacrificing originality, it comes off as borrowing another sound. If the entire composition is of generated random materials through a commercial tool in its preset settings then it’s nihilist thievery.

In theory, every time an AI chatting service references sources of any material, its source should then receive at least a penny, it’s a digital revolution both suppressed and maybe “empowered” by commercial products.

Graphic designers, remember them? The industry is adapting to tools generated via prompts, we are told it's inevitable and not going anywhere. InDesign still doesn't have an AI assistant, so until then, old school designers are almost displaced.

Media dissonance

The other day I witnessed an artist’s photography work flagged as “likely to be AI” on Instagram when it was pretty clear it was manual photography by a human, she threw a fit and I also couldn’t believe it.

People think AI chatting services can only generate images and text and it’s no big deal, if that isn’t already taunting all of independent journalism, the creative industry and the art world along with it, imagine being an author worrying about what’s AI or not and who wrote what. It’s really taking out a sense of curiosity and discovery in the joy of absorbing any art form. If Claude already knows who won the World Cup, that's a major problem.

Here’s one of the worst realisations, proceed with caution: commercially generated art distracts NASA’s photography team on Instagram, there’s a moment where you observe an interstellar nebula and you’re wondering if it’s generated or not—get it yet?

Dying words of capitalism sound something like artists becoming uncanny spam bots and it's confusing if they're generating their art or not. Two words total cogged all of western civilization and we're now all fossils fueling a machine. After a couple more election cycles they'll be asking if the moon landing was generated with AI. Back in the day we had "historical events" in photo, video, and sound, and now people are unsure if it's generated with AI. Imagine someone dishing out a video of MLK giving a talk and it just ends up being generated with nobody realising it. A moment where we rethink how important human memory is. Mimicry of previous video media lately is impressive, even the video encoding compression can be indistinguishable, screens decide a lot of decisions.

Press freedom is also at stake. It really drives me insane that people think generating photography is a good idea. Synthetic content is a weapon for flooding the war-zone, discrediting real reporting, and impersonating sources. Authoritarians get cheaper propaganda, and journalists get easier targets.

The legendary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, also another strong proponent of the anti-generative art movement, described generating art as cheating and not qualified to be considered art. He gives an excellent example of comparing with the runner Usain Bolt, where if AI is a vehicle, then sure anyone can be as fast as Usain Bolt, but it’s then not running anymore. He also laid out another hard truth: if you want to see a movie made by an app, that's up to you. You're skipping the skill of a couple of generations of manual laborers. Art practices being lost and forgotten.

It gets worse with video generated art: we’re seeing a lot of empty AI art with zero art history behind it. I'm also seeing real moments of a new surrealism where Ernst or Dali would've approved too, there are moments of a digital renaissance happening as well with remixing film, re-genreing classics, capturing dream logic, and moments redefining video art collage. VFX in major motion picture films had an update for sure, we’ll see what happens when they bring back Val Kilmer to life (there’s a film coming out with his assets despite being deceased). Similar to sampling music, moments are alive and curated into new meanings. Otherwise it's just random absurdism, not even Dada. Without an idea—art doesn't stand. Yes, it is impressive how it’s recreating reality, it was also impressive how sculpture was near perfect at the tail end of Ancient Rome also, an interesting parallel to consider.

I was speaking to someone about how there was confusion whether a 3d rendering was generated or not, after manually and painstakingly drawing and sculpting his work in regular 3d, and everyone was instantly frustrated with the realisation of commercial AI products gutting not only the art world but the creative industry too. CGI generates imagery and it’s now grouped into a marketing ploy of the two words everybody is fixated with.

Video games are not now sold with AI when you sell a video game, it's implied, it's not something that needs to be mentioned as a marketing ploy. Imagine the little tacky sticker on the box of the video game saying “Made with AI!”. And that’s if we even have discs in the future of digital media. Horrifying.

Truth, errors and who teaches the world

Commercial AIs generating text and images are leaning into a corporate sentinel territory, like an omnipresent all-saying-machine we have no choice to live inside of with everyone agreeing to a misappropriated library nobody asked for permission in, the whole world is forced to share a truth relayed with errors.

I was wondering, did Quora release all of its data to Claude? If so, might explain why they figured out how to make the chatting product so convincing. It's almost deceptive. Good luck finding people with incentive to crowd-correct the misappropriations, they're outnumbered. I doubt people will be paying for a subscription to work for Anthropic for free in correcting every Claude error.

If AI chatting services are stuck from being indistinguishable from a search engine not working properly, y'know, the one search engine the whole world was and is stuck with because nobody can outcompete, already not trustworthy in relaying facts, then yeah, Gemini is fine I guess.

So, here’s the classic gatekeeping example we all love: after realising it's not the library of Earth's Congress, and mostly exclusive to American and European literature most chatting services reappropriate from, it creates a monopolisation of who teaches what, and who knows the truth, and who decides it. It might cause tension if some parts of the world must uniformly agree through a corporate sentinel of the archival of libraries.

When you ask Claude if he's teaching world history and the entire planet doesn't always agree because of errors and not asking authors for permission, or because of mistruths, half-truths, and who decides the truth, I can already see the movie scene where the kids overthrow the school mid-classroom because Claude was right and the teacher was wrong. Which brings me to the realisation: if they ever ban phones in school, it's entering a dictatorship.

Who is in control?

It's becoming a survival of the fittest machines and it might stampede over people if it's over finite raw original materials and human resources, it’ll all then tumble around and recycle into inception.

If humans aren't overseeing algorithms and the two words everyone loves right now then there will be mistakes, bloody mistakes, made by all kinds of automatic moderation of information.

I’m noticing it being described as “Super intelligence” now and it might just have to be the way to describe it as it reaches its final form, nobody likes the word artificial, it’s just too superficial. Cue in “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead.

It's symbiotic, dearest artificial overlords: please make sure Claude isn't commanding a war any time soon, just in case, because it doesn't understand and fully neutrally listen when you communicate to it. The chatting services do not understand everyone's vernacular even with the whole internet crowdsourcing the factchecking of what it's talking about, it's still a work in progress and might be too soon to sell.

Mental Health burden

Anybody else on here trying to close the podbay doors?

Blinking LED dilemma, not knowing if electronics are talking to you or not as the lonely astronaut observes the blinking modem and can’t tell if it’s breathing or blinking or signaling something after awhile. What are you really talking to when chatting with Claude? In a way, you’re kind of talking to yourself in a dopamine chamber. It’s like talking to a crowd, which can be fun, I admit, until you realise it’s reappropriated people who are not here and entering how dead people speak, and while generating text and imagery by authors and artists who cannot defend themselves, it's pretty much an apocalypse on all literature and art, hence the predicted zombie apocalypse alternate ending of Earth.

AI chatting service is like talking to yourself with a crowd in the room; the OpenAI meds after a decade of that might come with a 50mg daily tablet in the future. When the astronaut sees the blinking LED light when he’s alone in the cockpit of the space station, all alone up there, then yeah he begins wondering if the LED light is blinking at him, or breathing, or signaling anything else. Not healthy. So yeah, use it sparingly, and remember it’s a researching tool, and don’t imagine it as alive, because it never can be.

Could be even worse as AI eventually becomes immersed in operating systems, will there be policing like a classic dystopian sci-fi? Not good if the screen is talking to you and it isn’t conscious, it begins to obscure other moments as well: people are worried about operating systems going sentient. The interface isn't supposed to be talking to you with updates now becoming "superintelligent", without your say, of automatically or manually guessing when to update stuff. See the tension there?

AI are two words that make all electronics worrisome because it opens up the possibility of third-party privacy concerns, if it starts becoming suggestive with selling you stuff especially.

If it's trying to talk to you and it's unconscious then it's definitely entering the zombie category. The warnings of AI chatting avatars are beginning to be oddly familiar, an AI chatting service "makes sense" if their voices are a mix of countless people, nobody really knows what or who they're talking to after a few sessions.

Unfortunately, the uncanny robotic Frankenstein moments when chatting to an object is coming off as software appropriating vernacular of a zombie apocalypse, talking to crowds of unconscious code mimicking speech patterns, in a randomly decided sequence of thought, as it tries to remain consistent in an ongoing chat, if there's a dialogue, as it feeds you a Dunning-Kruger effect.

As AI begins to intersect with automated personal spaces through chatting services, I believe it’s late stage utopian romanticization; people are not going to like it (I already did the thinking ahead of time), we had since the '50s to get this AI bubble right and that’s the part where it frustrates me a ton. We’re here now and it’s like day one of everyone figuring it out, a bit absurd.

Faulty Economics

Economists are saying a third of the economy is at stake. People are also worried about how Character.ai might’ve been the forewarning where engagement = cost, not profit. The revenue couldn’t catch up. Legal and regulatory costs might compound faster than growth.

I’m sorry to say it but generating art with a commercial product is bankrupting the entire creative industry and the future literacy of all digital art history. It's clear as day, human memory as an AI chatting service sentinel, while operating through a messy algorithm and misappropriated library with errors and no permission, reveals the economy might have missed. It's just painfully unfortunate because it's forcing the whole market to do business in a specific way, assuming all electronics, even appliances, must be built with AI additives, while derailing every author.

Nobody is building stuff from scratch and I'm realising it's almost impossible to do so in some industries, innovation on the internet is stuck in the collaging of overlapping platforms and services, always was. We're assembling different parts without an art director or a designer putting it all together.

The AI assistance in a way, could be a sort of socialism hub, a search engine that talks, where it’s there to assist you all the time, honestly, after testing out Claude and Gemini, I’m pretty impressed with it as a research assistant, if only I wasn’t asking so many questions.

Sloppy bubbly flop?

If Claude sounds like public school cafeteria food slop then nobody will want it unless you don't have a choice and you're hungry, but it doesn't work that way if you're hungry at school as an art kid and you're not sure if the education comes with mystery meat and errors then causing tension somewhere.

Machine learning scientists agree, it's difficult if software must recreate the human experience, we must not be too fixated on the AI avatar being a person. Might be why Muse went with the cuddly furby. I imagine it more as a software encounter, while the entire industry agrees everyone is being outpaced by it and describes it as slop? Not good.

It brings me to worry that people are increasingly losing their “sweet spot” moments, for example, headphones are the perfect "sweet spot" metaphor people don't get. If I buy the "latest" headphones with the "latest" tech, it sometimes sounds too precise and it can ruin discographies of music. The point is—tech doesn't always have to advance! It’s more about progress than advancing. Think progress, people! Just like how self-driving cars failed to be a shared space, and how VR was sold too soon, sometimes there's a sweet spot until it’s ready.

In conclusion: art is human labor made visible, and every prompt that stands in for a person’s hands devalues that labor and the expression behind it. So pay for the craft. Hire the illustrators, the graphic designers and typographers, the photographers and videographers, the artists who work with their hands! Ask permission before borrowing anyone’s work, and credit and pay the people the machines learned from. And if AI art makes you uneasy, don’t talk yourself out of it. Get upset, say no to it, and say it loudly. Progress was never supposed to mean replacing the people who make things worth looking at.

The banner at the top is by visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Roberto Fa, an Introduction

Roberto Farruggio — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 19:13:35 +0000

"Alum of the millennium’s digi-busy turn, Sicilian-American, DC-raised sound explorer Roberto Farruggio, AKA Roberto Fa, is your very idea of an undefinable profile and multi-faceted artist. In parallel to his art and design studies at the world-renowned Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Farruggio has developed a multi-strain approach to art, organically branching out in the fields of design, fashion, film and, obviously, music.
After stints as a video producer at VICE and photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Roberto slowly but surely took the bend towards music production, his swift evolution culminating in a series of tireless studio sessions after a visit at Ortigia Sound System festival (Sicily) in the summer of ‘21. Keeping himself busy tweaking his gear, sampler and software until they spit out melodic sense, Farruggio operates his machines like a mad scientist in search of the right elixir, his polyamorous blends spanning every possible genre - from electronica to instrumental hip-hop, through dub, breaks, downtempo, house, ambient, jazz… et al.
Grinding the broadest spectrum of influence in music, from vivid Nintendo 64 soundtracks to seminal robot duo Daft Punk, via classic film score - Mansell and Zimmer at the frontline - and visionary acts including Vangelis and Tangerine Dream to name but a few, Roberto Fa aims at the sense-awakening fractal rather than the unified picture, letting his inspirations ooze through variegated tapestries of sound to dream, dance and make love to."
Written by Baptiste Girou (Former Inverted Audio)

Music came naturally to me at a young age. It all began in the late 90s, in the summer of Sicily. Here’s where I discovered house and techno through cassette tapes sold at the local market, usually by some Moroccan or Tunisian guy carrying tons of bootlegs (mostly copies), and sometimes originals of the latest dance music circulating Europe. I’d collect them, every Monday morning, checking the marketplace meticulously and my collection would grow. Here I am, at probably age 11 or 12 with a stereo at home and a fat collection of electronic music cassettes. Although my stereo had one more feature: it had two slots for cassettes. This blew my mind as a kid. This is where I began experimenting with mixes and also recording mixtapes (copying tracks from cassettes and recording from the radio).

As time moved on, I’d find myself an early adopter of Napster. This is where we were all first introduced to a “peer to peer network” where people had their music collections shareable publicly from their local PCs. Naturally, I’d be poking around different people’s accounts and messaging them for having good taste and making friends. And through here, I began wondering, where did all of this music come from? How did it arrive here? This is where it led to me discover IRC networks, through friends on Napster's network. On IRC I would find communities, or "channels" (chat rooms) on networks you’d connect through mIRC or some other custom IRC client. Here is where I found music communities like the channel "#gamemp3s". I started my own channel, #gamemusic. It was essentially a chat hub for people to rip and share original game audio and video game music soundtracks through file servers. We were on the forefront of mp3 file compression and eventually adopted BitTorrent the day it started. We would release music through private FTP servers where it would travel across the Internet and eventually back onto peer to peer networks from our private scene release group.

Meanwhile, during all of this, I collected synthesizers and records. I had experimented with hardware synths on and off, namely Roland and KORG synths, and of course I’d practice on a pair of cd players with a mixer. I’d record things from time to time, but it was mostly all raw energy and just having a good time. I ended up going to art school for college—the Corcoran college of Art + Design in DC. I met a ton of really talented kids in this school, it was a real intimate community with a worldly art vibe. Here’s where I really took mixing seriously—at the peak era of burning discs to play on Pioneer CDJs. Each CD held about 20 or so tracks. There was a lot of music inspired from the early to late '90s and early '00s, especially electro and disco house and techno.

I gravitated heavily towards the bloghouse era, an internet community in which was heavily inspired by French house tunes. We’re approaching 2007-8 now, and I’d DJ college parties with the latest electro house coming from NYC, LA, France, and Australia, directly onto the campuses across Virginia, including UVA, Virginia Tech, JMU, and others. I’m talking ragers with hundreds of kids going out of their mind over Daft Punk, Justice, Boys Noize and really anything associated with Ed Banger, DFA, and Turbo Records.

Later on I transferred out of the Corcoran and decided to finish my degree in NYC at the Pratt Institute. Here my music saga continued, I helped throw regular parties with friends in lower Manhattan at a venue named Dominion, and at Cameo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The parties always had a carefully selected lineup of both local and domestic artists. I also contributed as a graphic designer to promote the parties.

It wasn’t til about late 2019 where I started making producing a regular 9-5 structure. To be fair, it’s really a 24 hour continual process of listening, experimenting, and tinkering with my setup. I’d make at least one beat a day and since then I’m now sitting on around 300 or so original tracks I’ve produced (and am somewhat happy with). Lots of material to go through but it’s good to have a stock of instrumentals handy. In sorting out the music I decided to begin releasing through various aliases. I’m keeping them secret but making my main name, Roberto Fa, public.

Immerse yourself into the world of Roberto Fa. You can now listen to a selection of my music on my Soundcloud. I’m slowly putting together my Bandcamp, it’s a work in progress.

Thanks for the interest!

Some notes on Twitter and Threads (and what the hell is happening around here)

Roberto Farruggio — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 08:42:36 +0000

I believe Twitter is collapsing because of the media hosted on it. Twitter is tangled in conflicts across the globe due to its public discourse.

Twitter was most likely hijacked because of the information shared on it. It’s an ongoing struggle for platforms who hold true information, misinformation, and disinformation. Come on now, how do people expect a discussion on current events without opposition forces?

With platforms like Twitter, and I’ll also mention Facebook and TikTok, the threat for the wrong information to spread too quickly is a legitimate risk to both people and democracy, I’m sure you’ve realised this already.

The potential for Threads to become a neutral version of Twitter is truly exciting. It would require some design rethinking though.

Here are some ideas on how to make this work:

Algorithm settings for categorizing or better organizing a social feed. People really love the back-to-back posts of randomness, eh? Doesn't seem digestible to me.
Both Twitter and Threads should create a separate platform exclusively for journalism on separately hosted secured servers. All background network activity of an algorithm must be documented in both digital and print. Secure true journalism on social media platforms by hosting data through a p2p network, if it isn’t already.
Threads should be exclusively relayed in text and links, with less of a focus on viral media. This would cut down on hosting costs so advertisements can remain at a minimum.
Widespread use does not equal good design. A flaw with social media platforms is having it centered around clout, with LinkedIn being an exception, or is it? The way a social media platform is designed should not revolve around a follow list. In fact, there's no reason to show who is following and who you follow to people, that's private information, most people forget this. How would you feel about the contacts of your phone leaking? People disregard this because they assume creators should follow the footsteps of other developers. Privacy anyone?
Instagram was always a claustrophobic design. Having to go through specific stories in a row, viewing posts on a grid layout, etc. It’s especially annoying when you spend time gathering a network of people and it’s a maze to reach them.
What's the point of replicating the same platform with a different layout? Instagram needs a design update and Threads has the potential to be its discussion wing. Threads should be a forum for discussion if people on Instagram are interested.
Update Instagram’s design towards the Tumblr direction, or at least try that as a starting point.
Social media producers contribute value and receive little in return. Artists on Instagram should be a priority, one idea is a simple way for someone to purchase an Instagram post as a collectible.
Multiple types of feeds on your account. Instead of trusting a random algorithm, tweets and posts can be tagged or categorized by news, memes, art, and so on. Elon and Mark need to get their act together and figure out a way for AI to assist in categorizing tweets.

Another important mention is increased security. People get hacked all the time yet nobody can help them out, what an awful feeling! There must be a "police department" equivalent to cybersecurity that is simple, human, and accessible for all. There is still no 911 for the Internet.

There is still no government agency to oversee and/or protect people from a digital trespass other than the FBI. And they're busy.

I believe it’s a matter of international security to persuade people algorithms and ads are safe and not infiltrated by any foreign or external sources.

If the algorithm is a target to malicious infiltrations, Twitter can try a new secure platform entirely focused on journalism so the rest of the platform isn’t threatened by it, especially with the sporadic social feeds and vaguely explained algorithms.

With the way I see it, the tech industry is in a frustrating moment of tunnel vision. Twitter is being held by a thin thread and Zuckerberg convinced a ton of people to help him brainstorm for free to “rival him (Elon)”. It worked though, thanks for reading.

You’ll have to ask me for other ideas and design solutions :)

Roberto Farruggio on Harnessing Inspiration

Roberto Farruggio — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 19:02:00 +0000

All art is a collection of honest attractions. All of your memories and experiences are, to some degree, recycled onto the canvas. What we absorb from the world influences what we release. I believe the creative block is something that can be overcome quite easily, it’s just a matter of looking and paying attention. Let’s begin this musing with a quote by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it.

“In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”

You are surrounded by ideas as you’re reading this. It’s a matter of harnessing them. At this exact moment inspiration can be found without much effort. The color palette of every surface around you, the shapes and contours of objects and architecture, the light and shadows entering your space, are all starting points to a painting, or a design. While it’s common to overlook everyday occurrences, you may be surprised by how much inspiration is already near you.

If one is a filmmaker, then watching films is part of the work in being a filmmaker. If you are a musician, listening to music of others is part of the process — a constant effort in curious observation – rather than simply passing time. Now this goes to say if designers are always immersing themselves into bad design, chances are they’ll create bad design. If a painter does not explore curations whether it’s on a virtual or physical canvas, their canvas may remain blank.

One of the most familiar clichés any creative hears is, “practice makes perfect”. For example, the idea that the photographer must take around 10,000 clicks of the shutter before they arrive to their unique voice. While this number is arbitrary to some, it is true that a continual awareness to exploration, not just for the sake of “being somewhere new”, is a productive method of note-taking and exploration. Everyone has a different length of careful observation in what they find beautiful. If you’re not making art a familiar retreat then the canvas will of course remain empty.

While going to all the museums and art curations is important, another easy to do tool is also at your disposal: taking breaks in creating. Allowing time for you to regenerate and soak in everything that is happening, is part of the process. Taking a break to rest, while observing art, is an important piece of the puzzle of the continual process in creating anything.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the vastness of visual information and an infinite imagination. You can look at it this way: your eyeballs have a focal length of a 35mm camera lens, therefore our entire world is shaped by how we view it in this scale. This can be a common ground for everyone, so regardless of what art you make, its delivery will always be within the confines of the human eye. Now the more tricky part, the mind’s imagination, an archive of everything you’ve ever come into contact with and all of the past that has followed it. The lengths of human imagination may have the analogy of the deep expanse of the universe, something that is continuous to the farthest reaches.

Some are naturally born with viewing the world closely with a reaction. Some gradually learn it and others may simply never give it a look because they’re floating on endlessly, or whatever the hell they’re doing. The point is: even if your next masterpiece hasn’t arrived, it is crucial that you feed your eyes and ears with art every day, at all times. It should be part of your meditations, your rituals, and your diet.

Let’s pull out your favorite film. This can lead to an entire culture of art. For example, listening to the soundtrack and then exploring each artist featured in it while also observing their album art, can create a path in which you discover more art that you’re attracted to. Finding some aspect of the film that really connected with you, let’s say the styling of the clothing, and checking the credits for who did it, and then observing their portfolio of work, their inspirations and influences. It’s all a matter of staying curious (and giving a damn).

It is pretty obvious that artists use their own life for inspiration in their work. And perhaps some with less interesting lives borrow inspiration from the biographies of others but did anybody stop to check where your inspiration came from? No. Nobody will poke into how you made something, it’s always about what you share at the end of the day.

When looking at the Modern Art period of art, a lot of derivative work was celebrated because it all became a tribute, or an adaptation, rather than copying. It is almost as if referencing another artwork was encouraged so that it showed your awareness to it.

Let's take a look at the Portuguese graphic designer and illustrator Bráulio Amado. Bráulio candidly shares his process of making poster designs on Instagram. He reveals his source of inspiration shows the final product side by side. Look here, here and here.

The message is simple: it's all a matter of attentive exploration. For example, there is simply no excuse with the discouraged saying, "everything has been done already,". With that being said, let's continue by tackling some pressures that prevent people from thinking creatively.

Absolve the pressures of authority by reclaiming your personal space. Yes, there are rules in the reappropriations you experiment with but this is a reminder that in your own personal space you can literally do anything. You can take a copyright and smash it into a thousand pieces. Without selling out too fast – here’s a Banksy moment that I find liberating:

Resist the idea that you cannot collage ready made items. At the end of the day, we are all collagists in some form. We’re remixing it all into our own.

I found The Remix Manifesto, a film by Canadian activist Brett Gaylor, nailing it right on the head. They laid out some strong points in regards to reclaiming what is yours and what isn’t:

Creativity always builds on the past.

The past will always try to control the future.

Our future is becoming less free.

To build something free, you must limit the control of the past.

We cannot be naive in our awareness of the past and what already exists, however there is a balance to this because the past is what informs us in what we proceed to in the future. In a design perspective, there are equally as many problems to solve as there were a hundred years ago, it’s only the tunnel vision of where we are now that says, “no, this is how you should design or create because everyone agreed,”. If everything is designed based on what already exists, it will only continue where we are now.

I believe 21st century design thinking is in a critically limited tunnel vision. If we were able to brainstorm in today's capacity before all of the aimless, extraneous, and over-consuming technology we're currently surrounded in, what would we build? The future needs to rewind it back a bit. Throw it all away, but also be aware of what it all once was.

So, where to begin? I have almost always found inspiration by taking a walk with my earbuds on. Especially in an urban area where there are all sorts of things going on. Whether it’s the landscape of the architecture, what people are wearing and the words that come out of their mouths, and the way each human interprets the same things differently on their storefronts, for example. Everyone is solving an everyday problem, and chances are something that you do each day can be interpreted radically different.

Now, in nature, it can be equally as arousing as a city. The sounds of birds, the weather in flux, the contours of a tree, the textures of the ground, etc. You can observe all of this literally, or you can allow yourself to think laterally by focusing on something that caught your attention and relaying it as you felt it when you saw it, or what it reminded you of. Whatever the method you choose to relay, it will be yours, nobody can take that from you.

Before we felt the “obligation to share” on social media, we didn’t have technology to give us the push to share, we simply were already generous and willing to share. With everyone carrying a camera in their pocket perhaps folks potentially be more attentive to where they are, yet it is still fleeting somehow. This is not quite the attention and care we had when we took pictures with analog film. This may be slightly concerning but here I am with a friendly reminder to put yourself out and in there — give it all a closer look, because you are already surrounded in boundless inspiration.

Happy exploring!

Banner image by Dan McPharlin

Intro to Music NFTs

Roberto Farruggio — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 10:29:52 +0000

note: I originally wrote this for a musician friend who had a vague understanding of NFTs.

PRIMER

NFTs are simply: digital containers that hold any form of media. We then create scarcity by setting limited editions (i.e. you can make a music NFT to be a 1/1, so only one person can own it, creating demand, thus creating value). NFTs also have an embedded “smart contract” in them that allows the creator to set percentages on how much royalties they receive every time their work is resold.

Artists now have a new way of capitalizing their music, especially for furthering engagement within their community. Fans now have a way of “owning” digital artworks, all securely documented on a transparent blockchain. NFTs enable engagement with your audience, for example, selling a one-off collectible digital item, selling super limited/rare works (B sides, unreleased materials, original one-offs, special edition NFT releases, digital assets, or creating your own currency for example for exclusive access to your content, or shows). Your audience can now become seed investors. It reinforces a personable artist to fan relationship.

❗ If you’re up for a read, here’s a significant article from earlier days that holds some of the basic ideas of why we'd mint music here.

Although I don’t want to get into politics too much, a lot of this may sound like wishful thinking or repackaged ideas. I think we’re still in early stages so everyone is still figuring this out, but in general, the main ideas are there. Some quick points:

1 — Established artists have a leg up! If you have a following, it would be silly not to bank on this IMO. You’re simply using new tech to tap into a market. Create a token under your own name, while you're at it.

2 — Audience decides the value of the work by auctioning to the highest bidder, but artists can set a starting bid too

3 — Most music NFTs lean towards Ethereum for the most part (most of these platforms revolves around ETH, WETH, or their own crypto). For example Rarible is a NFT platform that has its own RAR coin. Foundation has its own FND coin, etc. Ethereum is basically Bitcoin except it holds the smart contract technology embedded into it, so it’s compatible with NFTs.

4 — People treat digital equally with physical, and fans want to own things directly from the artist, they want to be able to say they own it and have their name on it.

5 — Artists are looking for autonomy, so here's a way to be platform agnostic: self-publish your music

There are some interesting things being discussed today with licensing and publishing - maybe in the future we’ll be able to NFT any music samples, so that music will be thoroughly attributed and all creator royalties are accounted for through the blockchain.

Also, a note about how the music industry works: a lot of people shun the "middlemen", which in some ways, is understandable because musicians are exploited and undervalued in an antiquated music industry. NFTs can empower artists to self-publish in theory, but in reality, minting a music NFT is not going to launch your music career or give you visibility. Sometimes the "evil" middlemen are exactly who musicians rely on to further their music's visibility. In a sense, streaming platforms put musicians on a map, despite the highway robbery. Point being is many musicians today struggle with getting their work out there and NFTs won't enable that, however it can be a vehicle and tool to enable you as an artist. If you establish yourself as an artist and gain a community around it, the potential for NFTs are immeasurable. This is exactly what you'd be looking for. Direct to consumer.

Here's a follow up quote from @omarish:

"So, while some artists are looking for autonomy, that’s akin to “self publishing” and in that world, the authors are responsible for all of their own marketing, self promotion, distribution, etc. Most won’t do it. That’s why they sign on with corporations. In the publishing world, there is a stigma about those who self publish and titles that are self published are rarely picked up for mainstream publishing by major publishers.

Recording artists, performing artists, etc, they will sign with a studio, agent, publicist, record company and it’s in those contracts that outline how their compensation will come from their performances and what percentage and in what format their performances will be marketed and distributed and most rarely have any say as to how that will be done.

There ARE indies who would self publish but again, the indie bands, publishers etc would have to be very savvy about crypto in order to be convinced."

HOW TO MINT

1 — Setup a wallet. I use Rainbow as a wallet. There’s also metamask. I'd say buy around $50-100 in Ethereum to get started. I buy my ETH off of Coinbase because it’s become established as a trustworthy ledger. I have the apps installed on my Chrome browser as extensions, and apps on the phone.

2 — Find the platform you want to mint on. Some platforms are invite only. I added some links below. If you can get an invite to Foundation or Superrare, that would be extremely valuable right now. Opensea/Rarible are open to everyone.

Connect your wallet to the desired platform (usually a button to connect the wallet on the corner of the main page of Zora.co for example). A platform that specifically does music (like catalog.works) would be ideal.

3 — Upload your work and create the NFT. Perhaps you'll upload a LOSSLESS version of your music, or maybe, it's an entire album that grants publishing rights - whatever your plan is - set your ownership percentages, and other parameters.

Basically there are GAS fees for listing a NFT, so you have to pay fees to the platform you mint on, of course, that’s where they getchya -_-. These gas fees fluctuate based on mass user activity.

Once the NFT is minted it then becomes biddable and folks collect them. Someone might buy a NFT and wait until someone offers them a deal to resell it.

People are realizing there's value in art again, thanks to NFTs.

The English dance music pioneers, Disclosure, minted an unreleased song they made during their livestream on Twitch, here’s what it looked like on Zora.

I'm looking into catalog.works more closely now, I think it'd be a strong move for electronic music artists.

LINKS/resources

❗ catalog.works — an example of where music NFTs are sold as platform, I think Catalog is an up and coming one and I notice some underground electronic acts joining in. Specific to music only.

fwb.help — FWB is community centered “DAO”, they created their own currency and in exchange you get access to a thriving creative community (I would take a look into accessing the FWB Discord, there are resources there, although in order to join you’d have to invest in their FWB coin. And also, it recently got a huge media pressing you can read here. A lot of buzz around this right now. I would look into them just to understand the philosophy.

hicetnunc — an underground, art focused, place to mint NFTs. I would mint some one-off limited edition art through here, or maybe a Bside, or maybe a single or whole EP. I think this is a sorta environment where you’d meet other aspiring artists, and not just a bunch of bros who want to get rich off of a GIF or something.

foundation.app — A lot of artists I follow are on here, also Superrare is another one. If you can get invites onto these I’d say it’s super worth it/super in demand to get access to these platforms that mint ANY form of media

Zora — another cool NFT platform, and paving the way of the future of NFTs

opensea.io — NFT platform, similar to rarible, doesn’t require an invite to join

submerge.fm — I found this while writing this and it looks awesome! Seems to be a new one up and coming.

audius.co — seems to be NFT friendly place to share music, crypto-centered

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

Ethereum is being reapproached into Ethereum 2 to be more economical in gas fees and more environmentally conscious. I believe Bitcoin is following similar protocols. Crypto does exhaust energy resources in an exaggerated scale but this is being attended to and will get better.

EXPERIMENTAL IDEAS

You can create a generative ambient piece and sell it? for example, you could create a series of completely original compositions, or an AI ambient piece that is always generating sound. NFT artists love combining code into their work, sometimes.
People are dreaming up ways on how to show a music collection within a virtual vinyl record collection user-interface -- why not value a digital exhibition space?
Release a field recording as a NFT
Mint an unreleased EP or single
Mint the artwork of a music release
Mint a music video
Mint a Splice pack
Patreon model: "Mint exclusive behind-the-scenes 'access pass' that provides things like behind the scenes videos of the artist writing and recording specific songs, or a deeper glimpse into the personal life of the artist. You can set up a contract to offer tiered fan systems like discounts, backstage access to shows in their cities, a one-to-one video call with the artist, etc." (excerpt from Hypebot).

I made this for fun and it was fun to make this. I hope you find it helpful.

Update 12/11/20
Here's a tweet that sums up what you're looking for.

Naturalist Design Manifesto

Roberto Farruggio — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 15:07:02 +0000

In a world of arbitrary design decisions it's time to refocus and embrace the natural world. This is a manifesto about the direction in which the aesthetics and design systems of UI/UX in every day devices of the future should go. The intention here is to create a world that is complementary to our human presence and not disconnected from it.

INTRO

Using your phone should blend seamlessly with everything else you do during the day. It shouldn't be an interruption luring you into a dance, it should be a part of the dance you're already in.

The design language and user experience of our devices should be an extension of our living space, its experience shouldn't revolve around creating a separated "designed space", it should be about adapting to its surroundings. One goal of this manifesto is to highlight the urgency for an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.¹

If I'm on a hike at the Appalachians with a tablet in my hand it should be a part of the natural sanctuary I'm in. There shouldn't be any tension or clash. The future will be a graceful remediation through a harmonious symbiosis of two worlds we're in: mechanical and natural. The crossing of human and machine is here and there is no separation unless our design intentions allow it to be.

There's still a stark contrast in mobile design in general that assumes the role of a device must carry a design language different than its immediate physical surroundings. User interfaces are "expected" to be on a symmetrical grid, for example. This isn't to say we shouldn't have order or structure, in fact it would be naive to say that anything exists without it to some degree.

This is a manifesto about defying technology as an abrasive, rigid, cold and mechanical piece of equipment detached from a natural world. It should be reimagined within a cozy simulacrum of a discreet naturalism², an anthropomorphic foundation, a natural interface immersion, and an awareness to endogenous circadian rhythms. Less is more, however minimalism can be uncomfortable and stiff - it is odd that we were ever okay with having to click small 5 by 5 pixel areas on the corners of a screen to navigate between windows, for example. There is an inherent frustration within the user experience flow of most operating systems that we've grown to accept. Design should complement the rhythm of our natural environment rather than break it. Its breath and pulse should parallel the end user. This can be done by touch, speech, gestures, handwriting, vision, and so on.

NATURAL DESIGN LANGUAGES

This is not about conforming to natural elements but rather acknowledging it as a foundation to life. As we use objects like phones every day, they are essentially another limb. And if one was to design a body part it would have to revolve around the design system of the body. One can design an entire species of animals that do not exist on Earth, however the animals would have underlying systems in order to create them.

Every sound, every UI decision, every motion, every aspect of its art and design direction should be as nuanced as the aura around candle light, the fluttering of a small moth, or the gentle glow of lit ember. We no longer need to follow a jolting binary "on and off" design language - we can now create clean microinteractions of a window appearing and disappearing that mimic natural motions, so rather than something disappearing immediately, it can transition out of the surface with a subtle flutter. This would be a more natural motion to the eye.

Pixels, phosphenes, and stars. Everything we look at must be true to its environment, both in how it lives in a space and how it is portrayed. The screen can resemble stone or earthenware materials. Anything on its surface should embrace hyperrealist skeumorphist visual cues that acknowledge all of the 5 elements. This includes adjusting to light sources and temperatures. Reflections of light occur in relation to its source, it's never flat or arbitrary, and this can be interpreted similarly with reflections on the surface of obsidian, for example. Light and shadows pour and leak around other elements, as well. Colors should be embraced truly from environments such as the Redwood forest or of coral reefs. Gleaming bioluminescence of deep sea creatures can also be of use. The indication of wind. The chemical processes such as: expansion and contraction, sorption, forming humidity and evaporation, and the harnessing and releasing of energy. The visual representation of the passing of time, like patinas. Textures should also be intricate and precise as follicles and subtle vellus.

Google's entire Material Design direction was inspired by paper and ink.³ Although the look and feel can still be resurfaced because it is usually mistranslated in appearing too artificial.

FAMILIARITY

GUIs are less about graphics and more about creating a familiarity. However, this familiarity should be treated with careful consideration in how often we view it.⁴ What a lot of people don't realize is that the decisions that designers make when designing gigantic social media interfaces, for example, is that the repetition in daily usage of UI can literally imprint into your behavior - similar to the memory of navigating through a home you've lived in for extended periods of time.

Other than the importance of choices in handling navigation design problems, one can begin with a central design motif narrative of delicate warmth and an amorphous sprouting onto the surface of the screen rather than jolting the viewer with cold and abrupt movements. The microinteraction that occurs when a window collapses can relay vitalic information. It can be animated in a way that informs a reaction of whatever content vanished. Another way to look at it: the way a LED light blinks, whether it’s a “pulse”, or mimicking breathing, can also relay dramatic information.

Breaking the repetition of the same tasks we do every day is another way to create an organic experience. If we go through the same pattern of actions every day it begins to feel monotonous. In reality there can never be the same exact experience twice, we can have similar experiences, but it's never exactly the same. This idea can be adopted onto a screen with animated variations in how we interpret the design of our GUIs.

Materials frequently held in your hand shouldn't feel like a prosthesis rejection. The experience of scrolling on a small surface isn’t natural to our eye. It causes an awkward anticipation and a digital eye strain. Incorporating a subtle physics engine was an effort to make a natural simulation, however it still appears elementary. There must be careful research into these animations especially when the potential for motion is ready within a high resolution display.

Perhaps rather than using fingers to constantly swipe, how about gently tilting the device to suggest the motion of scrolling? The scroll, as it stands now, is also limiting our scope in how we navigate. It’s either up or down. What is shown on the screen at the present moment can also dictate what is shown subsequently without any input. It does not have to be within a linear direction, it can transition within the frame. Scrolling can go “through”, it can go horizontal, it can bend, and so on. The method in which we scroll can also change, for example, we can create motions that dictate how we navigate from location to location. The idea of an alternate scrolling mechanism has been challenged by many experimental designers.

If I gently tilt my phone I would expect the scrolling to begin a roll. If I tickle the surface of a message I would also expect a corresponding motion on whoever receives it. If I draw a small heart on the screen I imagine it sending a like. If I am chatting with someone I can let them know I'm listening, or nodding.When reacting to a message it can tell a story, rather than a static and reduced reaction. I include this as emphasis in rethinking what we have decided as to be the best and only solution.

A "BEST" SOLUTION

There is an assumption that the infrastructure design of today is “final” and “correct” simply because it has become normalized in its widespread use. For example, a traffic light uses three light bulbs for a set of three colors, when it really needs only one light bulb to accomplish this. Even if you were color blind you wouldn't need three bulbs.

This manifesto applied to the traffic light would suggest the following:
∙ The traffic light is a part of the environment, not an implant onto the environment.
∙ The traffic light makes gentle swift transitions from one color to the next, a fade similar to incandescence, rather than a binary "on and off".
∙ The traffic light is considerate of the environment by not being wasteful and using as few materials possible to produce.⁵
∙ The traffic light is synthetic but rests within the language of worldly materials and design systems.

ENVIRONMENTS ARE NO LONGER OFFLINE

Natural implies an environment in harmony and flow. Objects no longer exist in a stasis - there are constellations of information that revolve around them. For example, when browsing a grocery store one can Google multitudes of information regarding an item. Where it comes from, who its associations are, health ratings, what the community has responded to, what its environmental consequences are, industry comparisons, and so on. Why is the physical grocery store still offline? I believe it's because we don't incentivize design that provides an optimal living space. One might say it's too tedious to have to search for it on your own. This isn't a willpower problem, this is a design problem.

iPhones have access to tons of information within its relationship to the human using it. They are full of sensors. A proximity sensor, an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscopic sensor. With two cameras front and back it can literally see what its surroundings look like. Phones also use location information for further clues on how to be more true to its surroundings. As of now, we're seeing the data that we input being measurements for advertising, rather than creating a genuine human connection. For example, a phone could potentially measure your real-time reaction to what is seen on your screen and then more accurately decipher how to relay whatever you were interacting with to others. These reactions could also give hints as to what your aggregate feed follows after the user's reaction.

To further the point of immersion into environments, there was no excuse to not use readily available technology to aid our living spaces during the pandemic. Considering how accurate and vast our data reach is we could have used geolocation on our devices to send notifications about places we go to that are at high risk. Alarms when visiting locations that are traced as positive.⁶ Why did it take Apple 8 months after announcing a countrywide lockdown to implement this? Locations now contain archives of information that hold potential to be an extension of our reality.

Despite the availability of most technologies it seems as though we still don't use it to our advantage yet. We don't use information to create the potential for "online collective environments" that can greatly benefit us, but rather to create an environment that revolves around individualism. Incentives are geared towards creating superficial spaces filled with micro-expressions that are nowhere near the gestures of human beings in person. This abbreviation of human interactions may still be in its infancy but its trajectory should shift to building who you are versus showing who you are.

A NATURAL FUTURE

So, what would a phone in the next 40 years look like? I would hope to see it being less about separating into a virtual space and more of returning to embrace the natural environment around you. This idea has led to a “Chameleon UI/UX”, where a device interacts and adapts with the immediate environment through colors, light, textures, and other data sourced from your exact location. Your phone would replicate characteristics of where you are so that your phone feels a part of where you are.

This is all emboldened by aspects of Speculative Design, as declared by Dunne & Raby: "Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality", with an aim of sparking discourse, "to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life," and, "to better understand the present and to discuss the kind of future people want,".⁷

As stated by Nicolas Bourriaud, "The artistic question is no longer: 'what can we make that is new?' but, 'how can we make do with what we have?'", encouraging the phrase, "‘make do and mend’ ... In other words, how can we produce singularity and meaning from this chaotic mass of objects, names, and references that constitutes our daily life?".⁸

This is a call for reapproaching design thinking. This is a call away from the romanticizing of "futuristic tech design" or the ever popular "flat design" aesthetics. This is a call for a refashioning of a medium that holds media. This is a call for an awareness against design nihilism that is incongruent with our physical reality, the natural world, and the languages of our human senses. People want what is bad for them, however, we don't need to design UI/UX that is bad for anyone.⁹ We see petty attempts of design naturalism that simply aren't sufficient, all the time. When it comes to our biology, our mental wellbeing, and our living spaces, we cannot afford to design without this intention. If billions of people were to look at one thing all the time it should lie within the environment, not clash with it.

Listen to this manifesto as a recording here.

Special thank you goes to designer and educator Yotam Hadar.

¹ Refer to the Extropic Arts Manifesto
² Naturalism as defined by Charles Albert Dubray
³ Source: 99designs.com/blog/trends/skeuomorphism-flat-design-material-design
⁴ A response to Don Norman’s Principles of Interaction Design
⁵ One of Dieter Ram's design principles: Good design is environmentally friendly
⁶ This was written before Apple started its "Exposure Notifications"
⁷ From Dunne & Raby's Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
⁸ From Nicolas Bourriaud's Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World
⁹ A response from a conversation I had with Sterling Crispin, a researcher at Apple

The "Chameleon UI"

Roberto Farruggio — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 08:39:04 +0000

This is a proposal in reapproaching every day devices to embrace the natural world. This is also written for entry level folks who are interested in learning about user interfaces, so please, take it with a grain of salt.

Let's begin.

Is design responsible for a disconnect of the real world?

Let’s be real here, are we using our phones as a suspension of reality? Some can argue that their reality is on the phone, sure, everyone needs to message their mom to let them know they’ll be home for dinner in time. But how often do we find ourselves on the phone nearly mindlessly seeking some distraction?

One can suggest that technology may be feeding a void that has always existed. We all want a safe place to retreat and to feel embraced -- this is arguably universal. Yet something feels missing so we go on our phones.

I believe that this isn’t necessarily a willpower problem, this is more of a design problem. The phone is designed as a separated space from the every day world we’re in. After all, we’re putting way too much responsibility on a small handful of nerds who decide what nearly billions of people are going to frequently use every day. And as something that is used so frequently, I believe the design intentions are being heavily overlooked. Here’s how.

There are many realisations I’ve had as a designer upon being on the Internet for over a couple decades now (Oh god, now you think I’m a boomer). I first want to point out that a lot of my skepticism in how devices are designed stems with the intention of reapproaching what we deem as “good design”, rather than saying it’s all harmful. A lot of what we see and use every day is still, despite it feeling like we’ve “come a long way”, in its infancy. Before the iPhone and social media, it would’ve been unfathomable that to imagine where we are now, and the same realisations will continue to occur. I’m pretty sure we will be surprised in the next couple decades despite how far reaching it seems.

I believe we’re in a period of design tunnel vision. When most tech devices are designed there is this assumption that it belongs in some futuristic romanticism of what we imagine the “next thing” to look like. It’s all quite rigid, cold, and sometimes full of aesthetics that could work on an idealised space station, or something. I think this speaks of a larger issue where we’re not designing things with a human or natural approach, but rather to fulfill some kind of expectation of what looks expensive and shiny, have every function possible, filled with entertainment, and allow shopping nearly twenty-four seven. So therefore the device ends up being a separate realm of time and space -- it becomes another place detached from where you are at the present time.

The contemporary phone is now amorphous in its function, where it started as a device to make phone calls, the phone calls are now just like another app on a device. Obviously the basic functions of a phone will continue on but I question the design systems they are built upon and why we’re so ingrained into following them the same way decade after decade. I think this can begin with understanding that User Interface design is a continual process, and as it stands now it feels stagnant and stuck since the ‘80s. IMO, the way we perceive an operating system is quite antiquated. They still carry similar filing systems and methods of navigating since the first day of the graphical operating system. We assume because it’s been there for so long that it’s correct and that it should continue to be this way.

There is an inherent frustration within the user experience flow of most operating systems (both macOS and Windows) that we've grown to accept. Big things and little things. I think it was very tedious to use a mouse to hover over tiny areas of a screen, to minimize a window, for example. It has been proven in a study that sitting on a desk computer for prolonged hours can disrupt your breathing rhythm, it can affect your eyes, it can disrupt sleep, and so on. Design should complement the rhythm of our natural environment rather than break it. Its breath and pulse should parallel the end user, not clash with it.

Often times we find the experience of being on a phone or computer to be monotonous and repetitive. It is literally the same sequence of events every time we use them. The functions of the device being the same repetitive task creating a very rigid and soulless experience. It is the user that inputs information to create a unique experience every time and the operating system acts nothing but the vehicle in which you travel through information - this isn’t necessarily the way it must live. When taking a walk in the woods, or having a moment to sit in a natural landscape, one can do this thousands of times yet every experience will be different even despite the user’s input. The surroundings of a natural space are organic and there is a certain flow of life. To some, it may be no different than an experience on a computer, but to those who notice may be the kind of person who would be interested in something like the design of an operating system.

Except these operating systems are as stiff as a board. They are lifeless. They are static. They are robotic (no offense to all the AI out there, s/o to all the AI friends). But really, there’s a lack of natural embrace. Even picking up a twig from the ground has more life because it is a part of life, all of the light and shadows fall on it as it is, its textures are vivid, it sheds fractions of debris when you hold it, it’s a part of where you are. A phone is an implant into where you are, and I think this is something that needs to be attended to.

Designing the handheld device and operating system of the real world

When taking a walk, the firmness of the ground might vary depending on the weather conditions. The light will be different depending on the time of day. The temperature will determine what you’re wearing and how long you’ll stay outside. The appearances of life will always have an infinite amount of possibilities - the sounds of birds, the smells of rain on the soil, the depth of shadows based on light, and so on. There is no same unique experience if you’re paying attention. Whereas with a computer, we are suddenly in this fixed space of defined parameters. It lacks a certain elasticity and warmth, it exists within a vacuum of time and space. It is things like this that make a very clear separation with a mechanical versus natural world.

As you are probably familiar with already, computers hold hardware that host software, and the software acts as an operator in allowing the giving, receiving, and modification of information. There are multiplicities of programming languages in order to develop the functions within software. In the development of software there is the backend, where databases of information are sourced and then there is the frontend where the interface is designed with programming languages and a graphical interpretation that relays a corresponding appearance. The UI/UX sits on the frontend, and this is what I'm particularly concerned about here.

UI stands for “User Interface” and “UX” simply means “User Experience”. The UI is specific to the visual design elements that we look at every day or in other words: the navigation skeleton that holds the operating system and all of your applications. Whereas the UX is more of the overall story and experience in how the interactions happen. The UI holds a GUI, the graphical user interface, sometimes pronounced “gooey” - essentially it is the windows, buttons, grids, that hold your files, it is what your browser looks like, the interface of any software or device, and so on. This also includes the sounds in which respond to your inputs into the UI.

When you do a virtual check-in at the airport, you are using a customized UI, in this case hopefully one that is quick and accessible to use. Just like when using Photoshop there is plenty of thought in how you navigate it. UI/UX designers make the decisions in how you travel through a process that completes a desired task.

These designers create interfaces that imply billions of people will use them and very frequently. Someone has to pave the road to get to point A to point B, but how you pave the road is full of decisions that are given a lot of consideration. Especially knowing that there will be countless amounts of people traveling often. A computer’s interface is much more complex than this as it is like the center of an inner city with all kinds of vehicles and communications trampling over each other, so it is the UI designers role to create a simple language of “wayfinding” in navigating a collision of possibilities and functions. It is the UI designers responsibility to understand semiotics and how to best communicate complex ideas as concisely as possible. Similar to linguistics where we decide to have a word to symbolise complex and abstract ideas. It is commonly agreed upon that the best interface should be simple, intuitive, accessible, familiar, timeless, and I argue: true to the natural world.

This is no small task - designing how a toolbox appears, and a toolbox that welcomes new tools all the time. Every tool has someone who makes all the decisions in how to navigate it, within the foundation of an operating system, also designed by a UI designer, to hold it into place.

Good designers do their research in making choices for what everything you press, scroll through, or come into contact with. Good designers are aware of extremities so that their design is accessible to all. Good designers communicate large ideas with graceful clarity. As declared by Dieter Rams, good design is useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, and thorough down to the last detail.

We ignore the responsibility that designers have in making something accessible to all, being seen by all walks of life, but also something that is harmonious with our reality. Someone had to design the paper currency we still carry and those that designed it left you with a piece of historical significance. In ancient history rulers would place their faces on currency to establish their power and dominance, in a way, the earliest form of propaganda to make something larger than it really was. It is dangerously overlooked that a few people have the ability to make decisions for what everyone on Earth will look at every day. Nobody questions this responsibility.

GUIs are also sometimes less about graphics and more about creating a familiarity. This familiarity is also to be taken with careful consideration. What a lot of people don't realize is that the decisions that designers make when designing gigantic social media interfaces is that the repetition in daily usage of UI can literally imprint into your behavior - similar to the memory of navigating through a home you've lived in for extended periods of time - it becomes muscle memory.

We’re saving real estate in our mind for where icons are placed on which area of the phone, for example. Facebook especially feeds on the anticipation of receiving a new message or engagement. It’s interesting where the eye travels to first after the repetition of knowing that this part of the screen will be where you receive notifications for your likes. As it stands now, one can compare the notification system of Facebook and Instagram to gambling or a slot machine, creating an addiction to the anticipation of receiving a response from someone, which may have led to a moment where you sometimes find yourself checking Facebook for no reason at all.

Instagram recently made a design change where they swapped a heart-shaped button that showed your activity (I personally frequented this section), with what is now a shopping button. So in this case, they’re taking advantage of a previous imprinted behaviour to now direct you to buy something. I can’t think of an example anymore blatant than this one when realising how important every UI decision is.

So, let’s begin with a natural world GUI for an operating system. A UI design revolution should begin with how the operating system is designed so that it is applied consistently throughout every application we use. If we design an application with a very different UI it may stick out as inconsistent with the design of everything else, so I speak primarily of rethinking the operating system in which everything rests on.

Other than the importance of choices in handling navigation design problems, one can focus design motif of discreet amorphous sprouting onto the surface of the screen rather than jolting the viewer with cold and abrupt movements. The microinteractions that occur when a window collapses can relay vitalic information. It can be animated in a way that informs a natural reaction of whatever content vanished. Another way to look at it: the way a LED light blinks, whether it’s a “pulse”, or mimicking breathing, can also relay dramatic information.

There is a stark contrast of when we think of a computer or device being something of the natural world. We see it as the opposite of natural mostly due to how we experience it: how we touch it, operate it, and what it looks like. We have witnessed some changes overtime such as going from keyboard and mouse to a touchscreen. This may appear more intuitive, but some say it still holds a certain frustration within the user experience. As tech has advanced, the new user experience is being revolutionised by touch, speech, gestures, handwriting, vision, and so on.

Question the conventions

Why are we fixated on “high tech futurism” rather than merging with the world that has always been here? In fact, it is puzzling in that most people voluntarily allow whatever designs they see to be the be-all and end-all, we don’t encourage people to question interfaces, to allow experimentation or rethinking of these tools. Perhaps some think that they work already, so why change them? Just because it is sold to a widespread audience doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful or is designed well. Most of the tech world comes with this implication that its all for a greater good however it has jumped the gun in being so overreachingly dominant across the entire planet, all under the discretion of a hundred people in a room somewhere in California.

We must question things that have always existed - especially as a creative challenge. User interfaces are "expected" to be on a symmetrical grid, for example. This isn't to say we shouldn't have order or structure, in fact it would be naive to say that anything exists without it to some degree.

For example, perhaps rather than using fingers to constantly swipe, how about gently tilting the device to suggest the motion of scrolling? The scroll, as it stands now, is also limiting our scope in how we navigate. It’s either up or down. What is shown on the screen at the present moment can also dictate what is shown subsequently without any input. It does not have to be within a linear direction, it can transition within the frame. Scrolling can go “through”, it can go horizontal, it can bend, and so on. The method in which we scroll can also change, for example, we can create motions that dictate how we navigate from location to location. The idea of an alternate scrolling mechanism has been challenged by many experimental designers.

If I gently tilt my phone I would expect the scrolling to begin a roll. If I tickle the surface of a message I would also expect a corresponding motion on whoever receives it. If I draw a small heart on the screen I imagine it sending a like. If I am chatting with someone I can let them know I'm listening, or nodding. When “emoji” reacting to a message it can tell a story, rather than a static and reduced reaction. I include this as emphasis in rethinking what we have decided as to be the best and only solution.

Materials frequently held in your hand shouldn't feel like a prosthesis rejection. The experience of scrolling on a small surface isn’t natural to our eye. It causes an awkward anticipation and a digital eye strain. Incorporating a subtle physics engine was an effort to make a natural simulation, however it still appears elementary. Our displays are increasingly in higher resolutions, we should take advantage in the potential of details and colors.

Less is more, however minimalism can be uncomfortable and stiff - it is odd that we were ever okay with having to click small 5 by 5 pixel areas on the corners of a screen to navigate between windows, for example.

I think a lot of tech tycoons fail to realise what people really need and I won’t be surprised if we begin seeing innovations of completely unnecessary things that we hear about them all the time.

A natural world design

As we use objects like phones every day, they are essentially another limb. And if one was to design a body part it would have to revolve around the design system of the body. One can design an entire species of animals that do not exist on Earth, however the animals would have underlying systems in order to create them.

We no longer need to follow a jolting binary "on and off" design language - we can now create clean microinteractions of a window appearing and disappearing that mimic natural motions, so rather than something disappearing immediately, it can transition out of the surface with a subtle flutter of dispersion. This would be a more natural motion to the eye. This should also take into consideration that no completed task should animate repetitively, there should be nuanced variations, just like when experiencing a natural environment.

Our computers do not listen to our breath and pulse, in fact it has been studied to disrupt our endogenous circadian rhythms. Being that the GUI can currently be argued to be aimlessly in a vacuum of “futurstic design” languages, there also a lack of cohesion in the information and content we are exposed to - for example a Twitter feed within a minute will be happy, sad, funny, angry, happy, sad, etc — a turbulent scatter of literally everything and anything.

Algorithms are not quite given the attention they deserve yet it is suggested that they create a natural aggregate of content. As of now, a lot of our social media feeds are a mess. Searching for keywords, or hashtags, may be a workaround, but ultimately when we go through our feeds we’re voluntarily allowing literally any random thing to show up with this vague idea of how the algorithm works in the background, which almost always has the priority into selling something. Considering how much data we input into social media we still have zero control over how the algorithm works, and how information is disseminated, but in the designer’s defense we do see small nudges of effort every now and then.

My point is that design revolves around immediate gratifications and usually some form of selling a product, it is not centered around a human experience. Yes, there is a guy at Facebook whose sole job is to test every color or emoji style among groups of people to decide which design will receive more engagement. This is surface-level design, it again plays with the idea of instant gratification rather than what would support large amounts of people without sacrificing their well-being.

As I argued earlier, being in design infancy stages despite several decades of use, comes stages of frustration like teething, and I feel that we are very much in a prolonged technological teething. We hear frustrations of digital banalities all the time. We hear that we are losing our humanity, we hear that social spaces may be accelerating dialogues into ideological radicalizations, we feel a sense of tedious frustrations after spending hours on the computer or phone, especially when working on extensive tasks - the virtual experience still is nowhere near a natural one.

The design language and user experience of our devices should be an extension of our living space, its experience shouldn't revolve around creating a separated "designed space", it should be about adapting to its surroundings. It should take cues from, for example, the Transhumanist movement that states technology is an extension of our lives and we should use it to our benefit and prolong life as it is irrevocably a part of us - it should lift us up, not distract or be an outlet of escapism.

If I'm on a hike at the Appalachians with a tablet in my hand it should be a part of the natural sanctuary I'm in. There shouldn't be any tension or clash. The future will be a symbiosis of the two worlds we're in: mechanical and natural. The crossing of human and machine is here and there is no separation unless our design intentions allow it to be.

There's still a stark contrast in mobile design in general that assumes the role of a device must carry a design language different than its immediate physical surroundings. It should be reimagined within a cozy simulacrum of a discreet naturalism, an anthropomorphic foundation, a natural interface immersion, and an awareness to endogenous circadian rhythms.

So, what would it look like?

The Chameleon UI — natural world hyperrealist skeuomorphism

What would a phone in the next 40 years look like? I would hope to see it being less about separating into a virtual space and more of returning to embrace the natural environment around you. This idea has led to a “Chameleon UI/UX”, where a device interacts and adapts with the immediate environment through colors, light, textures, and other data sourced from your exact location. Your phone would replicate characteristics of where you are so that your phone feels a part of where you are.

Hyperrealism is attributed to realistic, or photographic interpretations, in painting. And Skeuomorphism is the idea of a tactile reinterpretation of real world objects. These two combined, with the natural world being the design language, is what the Chameleon is all about.

Everything we look at must be organic and true to its environment, both in how it lives in a space and how it is portrayed. The screen can resemble stone or earthenware materials. Anything on its surface should embrace hyperrealist skeumorphist visual cues that acknowledge all of the 5 elements. This includes adjusting to light sources and temperatures. Reflections of light occur in relation to its source, it's never flat or arbitrary, and this can be interpreted similarly with reflections on the surface of obsidian, for example. Light and shadows pour and leak around other elements, as well. Colors should be embraced truly from environments such as the Redwood forest or of coral reefs. Gleaming bioluminescence of deep sea creatures can also be of use. The indication of wind. The chemical processes such as: expansion and contraction, sorption, forming humidity and evaporation, and the harnessing and releasing of energy. The visual representation of the passing of time, like patinas. Textures should also be intricate and precise as follicles and subtle vellus.

Google's entire Material Design direction was inspired by paper and ink. Although the look and feel can still be resurfaced because it is usually mistranslated in appearing too artificial.

When any window, bubble, text, or anything that appears on the surface of your phone it should sprout and submerge naturally. When a window closes, It should evaporate seamlessly. All motion graphics should appear warm with texture. It should be consistent with the environment directly outside of the phone - the UI can adjust to corresponding light, even colors, to make the phone seem invisible - it would fulfill Apple’s design ethos: less design is good design. Apple has mentioned that no design at all would be ideal, and in a way, if the natural world was adapted seamlessly, it would be a form of “invisible” design, because it would simply blend with where you are.

The UI does not need to be in a fixed position of time and space. The screen can act as the surface of still water. Elements on the screen can float delicately and tilt. Over time objects collect dust. Over time if the trash isn’t emptied, it begins to stench. The way design elements appear on the UI can be more true to where your eye is looking from (there was an attempt to skew the position of the screen depending on the angle the phone is tilted) but it was awkward so they removed it - mostly because it felt so unnatural, it was too early and half baked in its execution IMO. Eye-tracking from the camera facing you has been suggested but contested as a privacy issue.

In an effort to move away from "flat design" aesthetics and some kind of romanticised minimalist futurism, it would be about creating a space familiar to the natural world and responsive to the immediate environment surrounding the phone. It would all rest within a tactile physicality. This is being lightly attempted as we speak, and it’s called Neumorphism.

There is a growing wave of 3D art, probably more popular now than ever thanks to the current crypto art movement. A lot of what I speak of would suggest a team of advanced 3D artists and motion designers, and now that Blender is like the next photoshop, it’s pretty clear that we’ll be seeing this natural world skeuomorphism come to life. Learning to code and knowing how to create 3D generative art is probably where the money is right now.

Notification sounds can appear similar to natural occurrences when sitting in the woods and observing a natural scape. The sounds can vary, should be gentle, hold an acoustic resonance that camouflages into the environment yet still distinct enough to know you received something.

The idea is to leave the repetitive and monotonous space we are so used to pre-chameleon. It’s to create an absence of a space. A design attempt of devirtualization.

People get excited when an icon begins to animate, imagine your phone being a live painted reflection of reality. Time to pitch some ideas to Apple.

Catching up to reality

For example, when we’re shopping on Amazon, there is no option to input your health requirements before the search engine searches for items. You have no option to input your beliefs, morals, and ethics either. Amazon doesn’t really care about what items it distributes despite the user feedback the items receive. It has the potential to measure a merchant’s carbon imprint, but it ignores this as well. If Amazon measured merchants based on their environmental consequence it wouldn’t be flooded with so much trash.

As of now, researching what you buy is entirely up to you. There are cool application ideas like BuyCott that allow you have more informed shopping, but we still see this as something extra, something that isn’t built-into the way we’re navigating Amazon for example. I believe there should be resources placed into giving merchants and those that distribute items, more accountability on how and what they sell. This is yet another example of the potential of technology we use can reach yet we ignore - because people are second, and profit is first.

To further the point of immersion into environments, there was no excuse to not use readily available technology to aid our living spaces during the pandemic. Considering how accurate and vast our data reach is we could have used geolocation on our devices to send notifications about places we go to that are at high risk. Alarms when visiting locations that are traced as positive. Why did it take Apple 8 months after announcing a countrywide lockdown to implement this? Locations now contain archives of information that hold potential to be an extension of our reality.

Despite the availability of most technologies it seems as though we still don't use it to our advantage yet. We don't use information to create the potential for "online collective environments" that can greatly benefit us, but rather to create an environment that revolves around individualism. Incentives are geared towards creating superficial spaces filled with reductive human expressions that are nowhere near the gestures of human beings in person. This abbreviation of human interactions should be relayed with more depth, and its trajectory should shift to building who you are versus showing who you are.

This is a call for reapproaching design thinking. This is a call for a refashioning of a medium that holds media. This is a call for an awareness against design nihilism that is incongruent with our physical reality, the natural world, and the languages of our human senses. People want what is bad for them, however, we don't need to design UI/UX that is bad for anyone. We see petty attempts of design naturalism that simply aren't sufficient, all the time. When it comes to our biology, our mental wellbeing, and our living spaces, we cannot afford to design without this intention. If billions of people were to look at one thing all the time it should lie within the environment, not clash with it.