Critical Conversations: bridging pathways forward to greater understanding and creative solutions.

Lecture: Professor Curry J. Hackett

November 7, 2024 6:15 PM – 7:15 PM

Higgins Hall Auditorium

This image is a panoramic collage featuring people adorned in intricate plant-based costumes. The left side of the image showcases individuals covered in large daisies, with their faces partially obscured by the flowers. They walk down a street with buildings in the background, creating a contrast between the urban setting and their organic attire. Moving to the center and right side of the image, the scene transitions to figures wearing costumes made of massive, broad green leaves. These individuals appear solemn, surrounded by nature while riding in a vehicle, as others hold leafy branches and floral arrangements. The juxtaposition of their natural, plant-like garb and the urban environment is striking, with the city's buildings, cars, and streets adding a contemporary backdrop to the artistic, organic display.

A Critical Conversations Event

What Does a “cultural use case” for generative artificial intelligence look like, particularly for artists and designers? Perhaps more importantly, what is the role of Blackness in shaping imaginative approaches to AI tools?

This talk addresses these questions by putting Curry J. Hackett’s recent investigations with AI in context with his earlier work in public art, architecture education, and archival practice. The texture of his AI media for example—which conjures uncanny scenes rooted in the aesthetics of the American South—can be traced to his lifelong passions for collage, wild plants, quilting, and storytelling. As the internet as we know it faces an uncertain fate, Hackett shares thoughts on how his work might offer new perspectives on the future of Black culture in the historical record.

Curry J. Hackett is a transdisciplinary designer, public artist, and educator. His art and research practice, Wayside, looks to under-recognized cultural narratives inspire emergent forms of media, building, and art. Noteworthy projects include his “So That You All Won’t Forget” exhibit at the “Making Home” Smithsonian Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, Ugly Beauties (2024) mural in downtown Brooklyn; HOLD (2024), a sculpture and soundscape installation at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Recently, Curry has garnered acclaim for his recent experiments with artificial intelligence, in which he braids Black aesthetics, ethnobotany, and tropes of Southern culture to imagine surreal scenes of Black joy and abundance. This work has been exhibited in Washington, DC and Knoxville, TN, and has been featured in Bloomberg and Architect Magazine, and supported by the Graham Foundation, Washington Project of the Arts, and the Journal of Architectural Education.

Currently, Curry is Distinguished Lecturer and Professor of Practice at City College of New York Spitzer School of Architecture, as part of its Place, Memory, and Culture Incubator program.

This event is part of Critical Conversations: creating space for and educating one another about our multiple cultural contexts, activism, civil discourse, and academic engagement.