Max Park
Prompting Nowhere, MA Industrial Design
This research project explores the transformation of craft in the digital age. It envisions how artificial intelligence might help shape a future aligned with William Morris’ socialist and ecological ideals, as imagined in his 1890 novel News from Nowhere.
The designer, poet, activist and author William Morris published News from Nowhere in 1890, imagining his romantic vision of a future Britain rooted in socialist and ecological ideals. In Nowhere, there’s time for everything; people approach life and work as artists and craftspeople. Morris argues that the world becomes not only more just but also more beautiful as a result. This vision stood in stark contrast to the Victorian London he was witnessing during the height of the Industrial Revolution – and to the London we see today.
Like Morris, I found myself yearning for this seemingly lost future and the freedom to craft. My initial intention was to imagine myself as an inhabitant of Nowhere, practising what I thought to be crafts: weaving, printing and woodworking, to name a few. But when faced with the realities of modern production and consumption, this idealised approach felt both futile and privileged. My research shifted towards interrogating not simply the technologies that shape us, but rather the environments they create in our collective consciousness.
This led me to consult experts across a wide range of disciplines – from Brian David Johnson, Intel’s first futurist and AI consultant, to Dr Elizabeth Savage, a leading art historian on Western printing practices between the 15th and 17th centuries. Together, these dialogues explore what it means to craft in the digital age, the evolving relationships between labour and fulfilment, and how generative AI is reshaping both.
Despite aspects of Morris’ future being tangibly attainable, we seem to be actively eradicating them – literally, through environmental degradation, but also culturally, as we homogenise and commodify human creativity, experiences and futures through algorithmic systems. This project imagines how AI, rather than suppressing craft and creativity, might instead participate in a future shaped by Morris’ ideals. 
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