This exhibition was produced by Ryan Whitby as part of the Design Teaching Fellowship, with generous support of the Cornell Department of Architecture. Additional assistance was provided by Matthew Glaysher, Brandon Krazinski, FrankLaPuma, Emma Silverblatt, JImmy Wang, and Russell Zeng.
Surrealist games rely on miscommunication, unpredictability, and collective authorship to produce something beyond individual intentions. Exquisite Corpse applies this approach to a computational co-design process, where strict, deterministic logic meets AI’s ability to (mis)interpret, distort, and transform. The exhibition is structured around a series of such generative games : coded systems establish a framework and AI reshapes the outcome in unexpected ways. Machine logics are often perceived to threaten the role of creativity in the design process, however, this exhibition demonstrates an alternative workflow, where the designer and four AI take turns as contributors.
Organized within three zones, the exhibition moves from image, to object, to immersive experience, challenging traditional ideas of authorship, materiality, and spatial perception across scales.
The first zone explores AI-driven imagery between human-defined parameters and machine improvisation. An array of eight LCD screens separated by mirrors run an algorithmic game of telephone. As the image moves across the system, resampling and interpreting, modifications accumulate, shifting the original content in unpredictable ways.
Image moves to material form as computational logic translates to physical artifacts. Along one wall, a series of images and 3D prints document a process in which an algorithmically generated tower — coded as a procedural structure — is interpreted through natural language processing and then reimagined through modifications determined by each AI player. The opposite wall holds a bas-relief procedural sketch bookmatched to its AI elaboration, designed to resonate with human significance.
The final zone moves from static objects to a continuously evolving spatialization. An interactive installation tests one format for building co-authorship, where a camera inputs visitors' physical models and an AI interprets. These interpretations are then projected onto the gallery wall, creating a cumulative design that grows over the duration of the exhibition.
Through each of these zones, Exquisite Corpse examines the tension between control and emergence, where paradoxically human-computation establishes precise constraints, and AI generates outcomes that extend beyond initial expectations. The result is a design process that treats AI as a counter perspective, resisting singular authorship, and inviting instead a procedural system of ongoing transformation — one that is not random, nor entirely predetermined.
.jpg)