Dialogues with the Future
Researchers from TH Köln and Avans University came together for the annual DITES workshop to explore digitalisation, communication, and responsible design across disciplines.
Leonardo Cover
(Image: Leonardo 2025 )
On October 28, 2024, the latest publication by DITES member Dan Zhu was published in the journal Leonardo. Titled “Dialogues with the Future: AI Socratic Exploration of Christopher Alexander's 15 Foundational Properties for Life,” Zhu and co-author Peter Friess examine how artificial intelligence can contribute to reflection on future ways of life.
The interdisciplinary art and research project uses an AI system that, in the role of Socrates, explores the 15 design principles from Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order in dialogue with experts. The aim is to gain insights into the possible evolutionary development of complex systems through these speculative conversations. The resulting ideas were translated into AI-generated visual representations.
The publication is part of the special issue From Artificial Intelligence to Augmented Wisdom and is available in open access. This contribution was developed as part of the PLan_CV project. As part of the FH-Personal funding program, the PLan_CV project (funding code 03FHP109) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Joint Science Conference (GWK).
May 2025