Meet the community: Yasmin Morgan
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For this month’s community spotlight interview, we sat with one of AIxD’s talented project leads, multidisciplinary artist, designer, and developer, Yasmin Morgan. Yasmin Leads our AI tool experimentation project, and we can’t wait for you to learn more about her and the work she does within and outside of the community!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
AIxDesign: Hey, Yasmin. How are you? Are you wrapping up work? Noticed you’re still in the office, right?
Y: I’m good. I guess you could say that — ‘wrapping up’. It’s more like endless things that I haven’t done, but it’s fine. I’m in my studio. It’s a shared studio, but it looks like an office because it was an office.
AIxDesign: Nice view?
Y: Oh yeah, penthouse vibes.
AIxDesign: That’s very elite. How are you feeling today?
Y: Feeling pretty good. Taking it slow. This week I’ve been sleeping in quite late. I’m talking like 11:00 AM. Getting up just before midday, like: ‘Wow, this is so crazy. I’ve slept so well.’
AIxDesign: Sounds like some solid adulting. That’s goals.
Okay, So I wonder if you could describe your existence? What is it like to experience reality as Yasmin Morgan? What’s your background?
Y: You know, I love this question, I think the first thing that comes to mind is never-ending learning. And that’s partially because of the field that I’m in, at the intersection of art and technology. It always feels like I can learn something new or like there’s something to figure out. It’s similar to when you start to learn to code. When I first started, I was like, oh, I’m never going to get this. And now fast forward, maybe three years, and I’m completely at peace with the many, many holes in my knowledge. But I also have this drive to, constantly learn more in everything I do.
I was born in Australia, in Melbourne. My mom is Indonesian and my dad is white Australian. And we moved to the UK when I was quite young — maybe seven. When I was 13, we moved to China as a family, and when I was 18 I was like, ‘I need to do Uni somewhere’. I was thinking of many different places but ended up picking Goldsmiths in London. That’s where I did my digital arts computing course. That was a really crazy course. It was basically 80% computer science modules, 20% fine art critical theory modules. In the beginning, it was really hard because I didn’t know how to code at all.
That said, I feel like my existence is not dependent on these sort of things — physicality, or where I was born. It’s felt a lot like living with contradictions. I’m queer and I’m socialized as a lesbian. I came out quite young. I was also brought up Muslim. I was brought up in such a way that if you don’t practice Islam, and pray multiple times a day and adhere to all of these, so-called rules, you’re not really a Muslim. So I struggle to call myself a Muslim, because I don’t practice it in the way that I was told to. But I would always prefer to eat halal, or to not eat pork. And that was kind of part of this contradiction. These are all parts of my identity, but I don’t center my practice around it. It’s more like I’m an amalgamation of all of these different parts, and I create from that.
Y: When I was a kid, my teachers used to describe me as an ‘all-rounder’ and I used to think, that sucks. That means I’m not good at anything. Or it just means I’m okay at everything… What does that mean? But I think that does encompass me today. It’s not about the skills that I have. It’s more about how I’m able to just navigate different planes or different venn-diagram circles. I’m good at adapting myself and being very contextual. If I like something, I will just try and do it. I DJ’d for the first time a couple of weeks ago with this art collective that I do work with. I’d never done it before, but I had the confidence that, you know, I like my own music, so hopefully, other people will like it too. I went to an IB (International Baccalaureate) school, and they had these different kinds of profiles and I always got ‘risk-taker’. Nothing else. And I was like, so all I’m good at is just not giving a shit and jumping at something. It’s a skill. It is an intrinsic part of my personality: being okay with the unknown and kind of just being able to jump in and do something.
AIxDesign: That’s really dope. I think that’s a particularly great trait for someone who’s navigating the spheres you do. You’ve got the intrinsic vulnerability of being an artist — constantly baring your soul to people who may or may not give a damn — and then you have the exploration of technology, which could be overwhelming and ambiguous, but also really rewarding.
Y: Yeah, definitely. I feel like that’s the majority of the people in this sphere. I mean, the entire point of AI ‘X’ Design is that there’s this thing in the middle that combines loads of different disciplines.
As an experiment lead, how do you approach your work at AIxDesign?
Y: I wouldn’t really describe what I do here as a job. It’s more like I’m building community. That’s the main thing I like to remember — what I’m making for AIxDesign is for the community and it’s something I genuinely enjoy doing.
AIxDesign: in the total scope of your work, what is the most exciting project you’re working on now or idea you want to realize?
Y: There is a project that I’m really interested in. I want to make a 3D animation about a little blob figure that is riding a bicycle. And the bicycle basically takes a ride through the universe. Have you ever read the Little Prince?
AIxDesign: Yes, I grew up on stories like that when I lived in France!
Y: Yeah. I also got that book quite young. It’s quite a surreal book. I wouldn’t even say it’s necessarily for children. I loved the idea of this little figure kind of just being alone in the universe and exploring these different planets and I want it on this bicycle because, when I’m cycling and I’m having the best day, it feels like I could be anywhere. Over the past year, I have been getting more into Blender. And that’s kind of been the main thing I do when I want to procrastinate on everything else. I want to figure out how to develop my 3D style. I know it’s really colorful, really playful. I want to work on the music for the animation as well. It’ll be somewhat retro-cute, with elements from ’90s anime. I want to make a realistic bike first so I’m thinking about what I want to emphasize — I’m asking myself what my dream bike would look like. I’ve just started modeling the bicycle properly
AIxDesign: I love it. How did you start learning Blender? Or how have you been learning Blender?
Y: My first foray into 3D was with, openFrameworks back in 2020. I was making abstract solar systems with these different shapes and stuff. It’s hard to say what the genesis of anything is though, you know? Maybe there is no genesis. I remember following along with a live stream from this person called @Harriet.Blend on Instagram. We just made this model and animated it. Maybe that was where it all began.
AIxDesign Speaking of interplanetary experiences and blobs on bicycles, It sort of feels like we’re having a conversation about what’s beyond human.
Y: Yeah, definitely. One of the things that intrigued me about AI early on, during my undergrad dissertation, was how chatbots or text generators are able to elicit a sort of intimacy or feelings of attachment in people.
I was exploring the idea. I wondered if we, as humans, are just anthropomorphizing things, or, do we actually have the ability to feel intimacy towards inanimate spirits? It’s not as if these chat bots or text generators are actually conscious, but it’s very possible that we feel something towards them. It’s similar to how we feel something towards pets. I want to move away from humanoid representations of AI and ask what are these beings.
AIxDesign I love the idea of AI as a sort of, I think a biologist coined the term, ‘agential being’.
So who are you reading or thinking about these days? Are there any tools or resources that you’d like to share with the curious minds you’ve just inspired?
Y: Keiichi Matsuda. I’m heavily inspired by this two-page PDF, which I found on Twitter. He writes about using animism as a metaphor for thinking about AI agents. And it sticks with me to this day. He also explores augmented reality, and what embedding these sorts of computer systems into our everyday life could mean.
Something I revisited recently was the Carrier-bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin. A lot of people know her as being a science fiction writer, but this is an essay she wrote disputing the spear or the sword being the first form of technology. She says it was actually the carrier sack, the shell, the tote bag. As opposed to a spear — a symbol of domination and of power — the carrier bag is all about sharing. It’s about community.
Earlier today I read this very interesting article called How to Read an AI Image. It’s interesting because we need more discourse and methodologies for analyzing AI-generated media. The author has this very systematic way of investigating these images; it’s not simply ‘AI-generated images are biased and we know that and they suck’. We need to go deeper than that.
AIxDesign That’s cool. I really like that you shared a methodology rather than a concrete tool or piece of technology. I feel like there’s a natural progression from what you shared earlier about the carrier bag being the first piece of technology; in a sense, methodologies and frameworks for thinking about the world are kind of like the carrier bag equivalent of conceptual thinking. So thank you for sharing the time and words in your *carrier bag* 😉, Yasmin!
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