The Lifecycle of an Idea (Under AI)

Creative practice in transition

-- OVERVIEW --

What happens to an idea when AI enters the process?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how creative work begins, develops, circulates, and ends. AI compresses timelines, redistributes labour, blurs authorship, and shifts what counts as experimentation, originality, or completion.

We are an international research group spanning design, publishing, curatorial practice, education, and design engineering. We are investigating how AI is reshaping creative practice from within the process of making.

We are building a digital platform that will bring together an international cohort of practitioners reflecting on creative practice under AI. The platform will launch in May 2026, with contributions released progressively as the project unfolds.

-- CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS --

We are seeking artists, designers, technologists, educators, and makers engaging with AI to contribute through:
– a recorded interview
– a self-directed interview
– a short critical or visual contribution

Each contribution will be published, credited, and situated within the wider project.

We are interested in where tension forms, where decisions blur, where roles shift, and where ideas mutate, accelerate, or stall. What is gained? What is lost? What changes?

If this resonates with your practice, we invite you to take part.

Submit your Expression of Interest below.

Expression of Interest

-- RESEARCHERS --

Dr Layla Tweedie-Cullen: Designer, Researcher, and Lecturer at AUT, NZ
Jayme Yen: Designer and Assistant Professor of design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA
Blaine Western: Independent Researcher, Curator, and Design Engineer, NZ/UK
Henry Babbage: Independent Researcher, Curator, and Design Engineer, DL
James Smith: Designer, Researcher, and Lecturer at AUT, NZ
Joshua Hamish Whitaker: Researcher Assistant, AUT

-- TECHNICAL NOTE — MODE MEDIATION --

This site incorporates a live language model in selected sections. When AI Variation is active, body text may be rewritten or reorganised in real time.

Variations are probabilistic and may differ between visits.

The title remains static. Body text marked with AI Variation is dynamic.

Ethics approval granted by the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Ethics Committee (Reference 25/311).

This project is supported by AUT, Contiguous, and split/fountain.