Ideation is a Subjective Process:
The case for rebels
CHARLOTTE KESKINEN-KEITH
My work sits at an exciting intersection between material science, computer science, futurism, and architecture. I am developing the tools and techniques to design architectural Meta-materials while also theorizing new architectural morphologies, design tools, and industries that might result from this material shift in architecture.
Read the article in PDF form here.
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Figure 1. A theorized landscape of integrated direct air carbon (DAC) capture towers, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
I dream of a future with plastic buildings made from atmospheric carbon. A future when Direct Air Carbon Capture produces high-performing polymers from which we can then make beautiful new plastic architectures.
I always find the most interesting stories to be the ones that reveal how idiosyncratic, contextual, and personal ideation can be. I had a beautiful moment of circumstantial ideation this past term, and I would love to share it with you. This will be as much a personal story as it is the musings of someone deep in their own research, but I hope it can shed light on why I believe ideation and innovation to be a deeply personal and subjective endeavor; why I believe the next generation of truly innovative technologies will need to come from people outside the status quo, who can think differently, who rebel against preconceived logic, and why it matters that mentors are here to process and encourage this friction. My research took a radical turn from a binary and sequential computational framework towards a deeply ecological and non-binary computational logic that could only have occurred because I let ideation become personal again.
META-MATERIALS AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE
This story starts with understanding the nature of my research. I am developing computational tools to generate architectural Meta-materials. Meta-materials are classified as designed materials whose physical properties are predominantly determined by their micro-geometry rather than solely by the inherent physical properties of the material itself. (See Figure 1.)
I believe Meta-materials are the future of architectural technology because they enable complex architectural forms to be manufactured rapidly during a single process utilizing a single material—a plastic material. This allows for a unified process and unified materiality that can then be sourced sustainably. Rather than attempting to make every architectural product sustainable, if we can unify desired properties into a singular material, we can focus on sustainably making a singular material.
As designers, one of our roles is to show society what is becoming possible and to inspire new work and innovation. My research is as much about developing the computational logic to design architectural Meta-materials as it is about inspiring a new architectural imagination. To inspire thinking about architecture as unified in its material composition and organized organically as a new meta-architecture.
There is a possible future in which we might be able to design and build the net-positive structures of the future that are nearly infinitely customizable, high-performing and efficient, detailed and beautiful, all sourced from the excessive atmospheric carbon that is risking our global ecology. That is a future I want to give form to—a future in which it doesn’t make one feel dreadful or guilty to make objects we can love or spaces we can call home.
This might seem unrealistically aspirational, even dismissively naive. But the reality is that, in many ways, this technology is already being developed, and my research is a small part of it. An issue we face is that we have a sensible distrust of utopianism. After all, we live in the great digital revolution, in which lofty utopian narratives have either betrayed us or failed to be realized. Dystopian futures feel imminent and real, whereas utopianism feels futile and distrustful. So, when I say there is a future in which we might be able to build our way out of a climate crisis, I am deeply aware of that context and distrust. But the reality is, it might be possible, and we might as well try to design the world we actually want to live in because otherwise, the future will be designed to benefit those who have already gained from it. This is why a truly diverse futurism matters to our public imagination. We need people who do not inherently benefit from the status quo to imagine, propose, and lead a futurism worth living in, worth leaving behind, and worth dying in.
Sometimes we forget to celebrate the beauty of our own accomplishments. Solar power was once seen as an unlikely moonshot, as not being worth investing in, as not ever being more viable than hydrocarbons. But now, the sprint to deploy solar power worldwide is happening at a greater rate than we could have predicted. Direct Air Carbon Capture is a technology that can parallel the development of Solar Power. Still, we must dream of a future in which it can exist, a future in which it makes something beautiful and useful.
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Figure 2. Differences between meta-materials and standard material deployment, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
Figure 3. The exciting region of strength-to-weight ratio that Meta-materials open, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
FROM VOXELATION TO PARTICLE FIELDS: BEYOND BINARY MODELS
Now, let’s get into why this is such an interesting problem to solve. A question I ran into early on was determining which regions in an architectural assembly would be regions of structure, insulation, or acoustic finish: how can a gradient of architectural properties be negotiated by micro-geometries? The first logic I developed was a standard model deployed by nTopology, Fusion 360 by Autodesk, and plugins like Crystallon in Grasshopper: break the volume down into discrete boxes of space (known as voxels) and then deploy pre-generated Triply Periodic Surfaces and Lattices across the field of voxels. This is a logical and straightforward approach to deploying micro-geometries in a volume. Fundamentally, it relies on dissecting space into a cartesian map and deploying repeatable operations across it.
Ok, so what is the problem with this way of thinking? It is the standard workflow; by all accounts, it is the most computationally straightforward methodology to develop Meta-materials. Nobody else was challenging this fundamental logic. Does it work? Yeah. Sure. Sort of. Except for all the times that it doesn’t. This logic breaks down fast because it cannot account for gradients of performance or non-deterministic solutions to complex problems. Voxelization is fundamentally a binary operation of spatial logic; it cannot produce novel outcomes, force-aligned outcomes, and struggles whenever there are conflicting properties. It is also extremely computationally taxing at higher orders of deployment. After working with variations of this algorithmic logic for at least two months, I realized that my presupposition was fundamentally wrong. I presented this conundrum to some faculty from Daniels at a thesis review session.
I was lucky that I had Paul Howard Harrison as one of my reviewers. As an exceptionally kind, considerate mentor, Paul understands not only the intricacies of the problem, but the person engaging with that problem. With the knowledge that I had spent months trying to solve this problem, Paul proposed that I re-evaluate the core packing logic of the algorithm and see if there was another way of organizing the Meta-material to be force-aligned.
This was the exact right thing to be said at the exact right time from the exact right person. I realized that this entire time, I was thinking of a crystalline structure as a repeatable pattern of struts and beams, but in fact, they are an operation of crystallography; they are the result of a larger force-aligned operation, not a thing unto themselves. Paul didn’t give me the answer; neither of us had the answer at this point, but he gave me the social allowance to challenge the base logic. To think about the forces, not the resultant form. I had a moment much like Buckminster Fuller described—of seeing Synergetics in what I was doing, feeling it as energy, not as cubic abstractions. It was almost spiritual, it was spiritual, it was profoundly spiritual. Sometimes, it takes a moment of being seen and understood to be then allowed to break away from core preconceptions.
I felt supported in exploring the inherent biases of a cartesian, binary computational model and beginning to theorize a non-binary methodology of topological morphology. After all, not a single moment in the ecological world is a strictly binary condition. Not atoms, or energy, or cell walls, proteins, genetics, people–and with the development of quantum computing, nor will be our computing. The standard model built on cartesian binary logic is inflexible, incapable of producing novel outcomes, and cannot dynamically engage with contradictions or multiplicities in force conditions. It is computationally expensive because it is linearly deployed and non-scalar. The new model had to be fluid, adaptive, literal, non-binary, and self-organizing. It had to be synergetically ecological.
My solution was two-fold: instead of deploying pre-determined geometry across a field of voxels, I deployed a field of particles. I utilized the preliminary thermal and structural simulations to generate internal attractor fields. This allowed for the deployed points to self-organize into the inherently optimized crystalline micro-structures and insulator regions. Then, these points go through a network topology optimization in which the particles either form connections as structural struts or turn into hollow spheres for insulation. The particles become hollow spheres and struts simultaneously, where the desired structural and thermal forces overlap. These are then all volume-morphed together into a singular Meta-material. This new model allows for gradients and multiplicity to occur across the self-organized microstructures.
The new algorithm embraces gradients and non-binary spatial/structural/insulator conditions to become an even more efficient and exciting ecologically rooted logic (See Figure 5). The resultant forms look hauntingly natural because they are natural; they are self-organized under the same inherent logic that natural systems use. The building skin begins to behave and look like skin. The bones of the building begin to look like bones because they are force-aligned crystalline structures, just like our bones are. This is not ‘mimicking’ natural systems; it is a natural system. Because how it exists is intrinsically tied to what it is. How it is, is what it is. This revelation was only possible because I felt allowed to break out of a binary system logic and explore the deeper, truer ecological logic—an ecological Meta-material.
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Figure 4. Visual examples of initial voxelization, cartesian, and deterministic logic, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
ON THE ROMANCE AND FEAR UNDERLYING COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN
Architects and designers like Paul and I are presently designing our own tools to facilitate new methods of form-giving. The tool is not passive, and this work is not passive. Making tools is a deeply discursive process. Half of your mind is trying to understand what you are being told by the tool; then, you are imagining and describing an alternative pathway and testing it by imagining future uses. Solving for all sorts of yet-to-be-imagined problems the tool may face. Toolmakers listen and learn as much as we try to describe our intentions. I think there should be a re-romanticization of this process. Developing algorithms, machine learning networks, or complex new form generation methods are as beautiful, careful, loving, frustrating, and discursive as any other form of making. A sketch can be a script, and a script can be a sketch. The two can be just as beautiful to those who care to learn the tools and imagine their beauty. Disagree with me if you want, but I believe we must fall in love with our computational tools.
I think a fear people have with these computational tools, most often centering around the fabled ‘AI,’ is that they are untrustworthy and dangerous and challenge our anthropocentric superiority complexes. My perspective as someone who works with these tools is that I do not feel fear; these models are not often unknowably complex. People often fear the unknown, but I feel a kinder response is to care to be curious about the unknown. After all, we are all still children in this world, and curiosity is our strength.
I would like to challenge the hypothetical fear-based scenarios that often arise in response to this work. So much of this fear comes from constructing false dualisms in an effort of self-definition. Of needing an ‘other’ so as to define the self. Of needing the object to define the subject. Of building our epistemology of our identities on cartesian dualisms. This is an inherently shaky foundation, as it intertwines our self-definition with the reliance on our separation from the other we have constructed.
Historically, this has underpinned many of our most harmful social dualisms, our nature/man dualisms, our racial dualisms, our gender/sex dualisms, and our able/disabled dualisms, and with each dualism comes violence to police the other to maintain the self-conception. We are doing this now by creating this phantasm, this specter, of AI to haunt us. This is not how I want to be; this is not the structure of self-definition I want for my own sense of consciousness. So, instead, I approach machine learning with curiosity, care, and love. And with that approach, I can see how it influences my own self-definition and my work. I want to go on this journey of self-discovery together. I do not tie my consciousness to the fabrication of the ‘other’. That fundamental shift allows me to be open to learning and developing these new tools without fear. Because how these tools get developed is what they will end up becoming. How our children are raised is who they will end up being. How we embrace the ‘other’ is how we embrace ourselves.
This is ecological thinking, as Timothy Morton describes; it is non-hierarchical, subscendent, intertwined, and enmeshed. It empowers the aesthetic realm.[1] Ecological thinking is as important to my relationship with computational design as it is to my own identity as a trans person. It is enmeshed in how I work and who I am. I truly see how my work, my thinking, my care for these algorithms, come from who I am, from my context, and from the supportive people around me.
![]()
Figure 5. Process print of self-organization within the current ecological algorithm, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVITY
You may be asking at this point, if ecological thinking is so enmeshed with how I work and who I am, how did it take months to challenge the cartesian and deterministic logic of the initial algorithm? That is a question I have thought about often and is why I agreed to write this essay. This essay is a record of me grappling with this question. Why was I so handicapped by normative heuristics for so long, and why did I need social acceptance to be willing to challenge cartesian dualism and determinism in my initial work on Meta-material generation?
I don’t know if I would have overcome normativity without feeling like I had the space to explore an alternative way of thinking—without the intervention of someone like Paul. I think everyone who has explored their own identity will understand what that support and allowance means. And I think the same thing applies to coming up with new ideas. That there is no distinction between the journey of the heart and the journey of the mind. We fundamentally need the same thing to grow and explore in new ways.
That is what makes some teachers, whether they be professors, or parents, or elders, or partners, so special. They hold space for us to allow ourselves to explore, think non-linearly, play, and think differently. Some people will always be rebels at heart. I am probably more rebellious than most, but that is likely the result of my identity requiring that of me and having parents who also have difficulty with constructs of authority. But I think that this freedom to rebel requires social support and practice. Rebellious nature takes practice. Ideation is a subjective process, and this subjectivity is the most beautiful and rich aspect of the process. I do not think it should be avoided, and I think the mark of a great teacher is in seeing and offering kindness to the subjective nature of developing beautifully divergent ideas.
I see in the discussion surrounding higher education and systems that gain the veneer of meritocracies, there is a tendency to obfuscate our responsibility to the subjective by claiming that knowledge and discovery can be an ‘objective’ process. But I would argue that if these institutions want radical solutions, want truly innovative ideas, then the subjective aspect of ideation is critical. It matters that there are faculty members who listen to and care about their students. It matters that there is leadership willing to offer kindness when someone faces difficulties. It matters that some professors can truly be present with their students and give them the space to rebel. As designers, it matters that we do this work of tool development ourselves.
In terms of those who are innovating, I believe that the truly radical and innovative solutions will only come from the people less epistemologically tied to being beneficiaries of the status quo. I fear for what machine learning will become because I see who is getting the funding to do this work, how they think, and the futures they want and fear. I see that they make these tools in their own image, with their own biases and core epistemologies. And in many ways, this is what will inherently limit these tools’ capacity.
At this moment, there is a trend to dismiss the subjective—to dismiss it as ‘woke’, part of some grand ‘agenda’, or a distraction from the real work. Or claim that our institutions can be meritocracies if we ignore the subjective realm. That we can somehow afford to be chronically incurious about the lives of others. But the reality is that the subjective realm is where ideation occurs. And if we want a radical future worth hoping for, we need to empower the most divergent and rebellious people to think differently in a non-linear, non-hierarchical, non-binary, ecologically-centred, and deeply subjective manner.
Let the myth of ‘objectivity’ die. It is time to fully embrace the subjective realm and see ourselves in each other. To listen, care, play, and rebel. Only then will we get the innovation needed for a future worth dying in and worth leaving to those next who deserve our best efforts.
My work sits at an exciting intersection between material science, computer science, futurism, and architecture. I am developing the tools and techniques to design architectural Meta-materials while also theorizing new architectural morphologies, design tools, and industries that might result from this material shift in architecture.
Read the article in PDF form here.
Figure 1. A theorized landscape of integrated direct air carbon (DAC) capture towers, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
I dream of a future with plastic buildings made from atmospheric carbon. A future when Direct Air Carbon Capture produces high-performing polymers from which we can then make beautiful new plastic architectures.
I always find the most interesting stories to be the ones that reveal how idiosyncratic, contextual, and personal ideation can be. I had a beautiful moment of circumstantial ideation this past term, and I would love to share it with you. This will be as much a personal story as it is the musings of someone deep in their own research, but I hope it can shed light on why I believe ideation and innovation to be a deeply personal and subjective endeavor; why I believe the next generation of truly innovative technologies will need to come from people outside the status quo, who can think differently, who rebel against preconceived logic, and why it matters that mentors are here to process and encourage this friction. My research took a radical turn from a binary and sequential computational framework towards a deeply ecological and non-binary computational logic that could only have occurred because I let ideation become personal again.
META-MATERIALS AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE
This story starts with understanding the nature of my research. I am developing computational tools to generate architectural Meta-materials. Meta-materials are classified as designed materials whose physical properties are predominantly determined by their micro-geometry rather than solely by the inherent physical properties of the material itself. (See Figure 1.)
I believe Meta-materials are the future of architectural technology because they enable complex architectural forms to be manufactured rapidly during a single process utilizing a single material—a plastic material. This allows for a unified process and unified materiality that can then be sourced sustainably. Rather than attempting to make every architectural product sustainable, if we can unify desired properties into a singular material, we can focus on sustainably making a singular material.
As designers, one of our roles is to show society what is becoming possible and to inspire new work and innovation. My research is as much about developing the computational logic to design architectural Meta-materials as it is about inspiring a new architectural imagination. To inspire thinking about architecture as unified in its material composition and organized organically as a new meta-architecture.
There is a possible future in which we might be able to design and build the net-positive structures of the future that are nearly infinitely customizable, high-performing and efficient, detailed and beautiful, all sourced from the excessive atmospheric carbon that is risking our global ecology. That is a future I want to give form to—a future in which it doesn’t make one feel dreadful or guilty to make objects we can love or spaces we can call home.
“This is why a truly diverse futurism matters to our public imagination. We need people who do not inherently benefit from the status quo to imagine, propose, and lead a futurism worth living in, worth leaving behind, and worth dying in.”
This might seem unrealistically aspirational, even dismissively naive. But the reality is that, in many ways, this technology is already being developed, and my research is a small part of it. An issue we face is that we have a sensible distrust of utopianism. After all, we live in the great digital revolution, in which lofty utopian narratives have either betrayed us or failed to be realized. Dystopian futures feel imminent and real, whereas utopianism feels futile and distrustful. So, when I say there is a future in which we might be able to build our way out of a climate crisis, I am deeply aware of that context and distrust. But the reality is, it might be possible, and we might as well try to design the world we actually want to live in because otherwise, the future will be designed to benefit those who have already gained from it. This is why a truly diverse futurism matters to our public imagination. We need people who do not inherently benefit from the status quo to imagine, propose, and lead a futurism worth living in, worth leaving behind, and worth dying in.
Sometimes we forget to celebrate the beauty of our own accomplishments. Solar power was once seen as an unlikely moonshot, as not being worth investing in, as not ever being more viable than hydrocarbons. But now, the sprint to deploy solar power worldwide is happening at a greater rate than we could have predicted. Direct Air Carbon Capture is a technology that can parallel the development of Solar Power. Still, we must dream of a future in which it can exist, a future in which it makes something beautiful and useful.
Figure 2. Differences between meta-materials and standard material deployment, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
Figure 3. The exciting region of strength-to-weight ratio that Meta-materials open, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
FROM VOXELATION TO PARTICLE FIELDS: BEYOND BINARY MODELS
Now, let’s get into why this is such an interesting problem to solve. A question I ran into early on was determining which regions in an architectural assembly would be regions of structure, insulation, or acoustic finish: how can a gradient of architectural properties be negotiated by micro-geometries? The first logic I developed was a standard model deployed by nTopology, Fusion 360 by Autodesk, and plugins like Crystallon in Grasshopper: break the volume down into discrete boxes of space (known as voxels) and then deploy pre-generated Triply Periodic Surfaces and Lattices across the field of voxels. This is a logical and straightforward approach to deploying micro-geometries in a volume. Fundamentally, it relies on dissecting space into a cartesian map and deploying repeatable operations across it.
Ok, so what is the problem with this way of thinking? It is the standard workflow; by all accounts, it is the most computationally straightforward methodology to develop Meta-materials. Nobody else was challenging this fundamental logic. Does it work? Yeah. Sure. Sort of. Except for all the times that it doesn’t. This logic breaks down fast because it cannot account for gradients of performance or non-deterministic solutions to complex problems. Voxelization is fundamentally a binary operation of spatial logic; it cannot produce novel outcomes, force-aligned outcomes, and struggles whenever there are conflicting properties. It is also extremely computationally taxing at higher orders of deployment. After working with variations of this algorithmic logic for at least two months, I realized that my presupposition was fundamentally wrong. I presented this conundrum to some faculty from Daniels at a thesis review session.
I was lucky that I had Paul Howard Harrison as one of my reviewers. As an exceptionally kind, considerate mentor, Paul understands not only the intricacies of the problem, but the person engaging with that problem. With the knowledge that I had spent months trying to solve this problem, Paul proposed that I re-evaluate the core packing logic of the algorithm and see if there was another way of organizing the Meta-material to be force-aligned.
“I felt supported in exploring the inherent biases of a cartesian, binary computational model and beginning to theorize a non-binary methodology of topological morphology. After all, not a single moment in the ecological world is a strictly binary condition.”
This was the exact right thing to be said at the exact right time from the exact right person. I realized that this entire time, I was thinking of a crystalline structure as a repeatable pattern of struts and beams, but in fact, they are an operation of crystallography; they are the result of a larger force-aligned operation, not a thing unto themselves. Paul didn’t give me the answer; neither of us had the answer at this point, but he gave me the social allowance to challenge the base logic. To think about the forces, not the resultant form. I had a moment much like Buckminster Fuller described—of seeing Synergetics in what I was doing, feeling it as energy, not as cubic abstractions. It was almost spiritual, it was spiritual, it was profoundly spiritual. Sometimes, it takes a moment of being seen and understood to be then allowed to break away from core preconceptions.
I felt supported in exploring the inherent biases of a cartesian, binary computational model and beginning to theorize a non-binary methodology of topological morphology. After all, not a single moment in the ecological world is a strictly binary condition. Not atoms, or energy, or cell walls, proteins, genetics, people–and with the development of quantum computing, nor will be our computing. The standard model built on cartesian binary logic is inflexible, incapable of producing novel outcomes, and cannot dynamically engage with contradictions or multiplicities in force conditions. It is computationally expensive because it is linearly deployed and non-scalar. The new model had to be fluid, adaptive, literal, non-binary, and self-organizing. It had to be synergetically ecological.
My solution was two-fold: instead of deploying pre-determined geometry across a field of voxels, I deployed a field of particles. I utilized the preliminary thermal and structural simulations to generate internal attractor fields. This allowed for the deployed points to self-organize into the inherently optimized crystalline micro-structures and insulator regions. Then, these points go through a network topology optimization in which the particles either form connections as structural struts or turn into hollow spheres for insulation. The particles become hollow spheres and struts simultaneously, where the desired structural and thermal forces overlap. These are then all volume-morphed together into a singular Meta-material. This new model allows for gradients and multiplicity to occur across the self-organized microstructures.
The new algorithm embraces gradients and non-binary spatial/structural/insulator conditions to become an even more efficient and exciting ecologically rooted logic (See Figure 5). The resultant forms look hauntingly natural because they are natural; they are self-organized under the same inherent logic that natural systems use. The building skin begins to behave and look like skin. The bones of the building begin to look like bones because they are force-aligned crystalline structures, just like our bones are. This is not ‘mimicking’ natural systems; it is a natural system. Because how it exists is intrinsically tied to what it is. How it is, is what it is. This revelation was only possible because I felt allowed to break out of a binary system logic and explore the deeper, truer ecological logic—an ecological Meta-material.
Figure 4. Visual examples of initial voxelization, cartesian, and deterministic logic, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
ON THE ROMANCE AND FEAR UNDERLYING COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN
Architects and designers like Paul and I are presently designing our own tools to facilitate new methods of form-giving. The tool is not passive, and this work is not passive. Making tools is a deeply discursive process. Half of your mind is trying to understand what you are being told by the tool; then, you are imagining and describing an alternative pathway and testing it by imagining future uses. Solving for all sorts of yet-to-be-imagined problems the tool may face. Toolmakers listen and learn as much as we try to describe our intentions. I think there should be a re-romanticization of this process. Developing algorithms, machine learning networks, or complex new form generation methods are as beautiful, careful, loving, frustrating, and discursive as any other form of making. A sketch can be a script, and a script can be a sketch. The two can be just as beautiful to those who care to learn the tools and imagine their beauty. Disagree with me if you want, but I believe we must fall in love with our computational tools.
“Developing algorithms, machine learning networks, or complex new form generation methods are as beautiful, careful, loving, frustrating, and discursive as any other form of making. A sketch can be a script, and a script can be a sketch.”
I think a fear people have with these computational tools, most often centering around the fabled ‘AI,’ is that they are untrustworthy and dangerous and challenge our anthropocentric superiority complexes. My perspective as someone who works with these tools is that I do not feel fear; these models are not often unknowably complex. People often fear the unknown, but I feel a kinder response is to care to be curious about the unknown. After all, we are all still children in this world, and curiosity is our strength.
I would like to challenge the hypothetical fear-based scenarios that often arise in response to this work. So much of this fear comes from constructing false dualisms in an effort of self-definition. Of needing an ‘other’ so as to define the self. Of needing the object to define the subject. Of building our epistemology of our identities on cartesian dualisms. This is an inherently shaky foundation, as it intertwines our self-definition with the reliance on our separation from the other we have constructed.
“People often fear the unknown, but I feel a kinder response is to care to be curious about the unknown.”
Historically, this has underpinned many of our most harmful social dualisms, our nature/man dualisms, our racial dualisms, our gender/sex dualisms, and our able/disabled dualisms, and with each dualism comes violence to police the other to maintain the self-conception. We are doing this now by creating this phantasm, this specter, of AI to haunt us. This is not how I want to be; this is not the structure of self-definition I want for my own sense of consciousness. So, instead, I approach machine learning with curiosity, care, and love. And with that approach, I can see how it influences my own self-definition and my work. I want to go on this journey of self-discovery together. I do not tie my consciousness to the fabrication of the ‘other’. That fundamental shift allows me to be open to learning and developing these new tools without fear. Because how these tools get developed is what they will end up becoming. How our children are raised is who they will end up being. How we embrace the ‘other’ is how we embrace ourselves.
This is ecological thinking, as Timothy Morton describes; it is non-hierarchical, subscendent, intertwined, and enmeshed. It empowers the aesthetic realm.[1] Ecological thinking is as important to my relationship with computational design as it is to my own identity as a trans person. It is enmeshed in how I work and who I am. I truly see how my work, my thinking, my care for these algorithms, come from who I am, from my context, and from the supportive people around me.
Figure 5. Process print of self-organization within the current ecological algorithm, 2024. Charlotte Keskinen-Keith.
THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVITY
You may be asking at this point, if ecological thinking is so enmeshed with how I work and who I am, how did it take months to challenge the cartesian and deterministic logic of the initial algorithm? That is a question I have thought about often and is why I agreed to write this essay. This essay is a record of me grappling with this question. Why was I so handicapped by normative heuristics for so long, and why did I need social acceptance to be willing to challenge cartesian dualism and determinism in my initial work on Meta-material generation?
I don’t know if I would have overcome normativity without feeling like I had the space to explore an alternative way of thinking—without the intervention of someone like Paul. I think everyone who has explored their own identity will understand what that support and allowance means. And I think the same thing applies to coming up with new ideas. That there is no distinction between the journey of the heart and the journey of the mind. We fundamentally need the same thing to grow and explore in new ways.
That is what makes some teachers, whether they be professors, or parents, or elders, or partners, so special. They hold space for us to allow ourselves to explore, think non-linearly, play, and think differently. Some people will always be rebels at heart. I am probably more rebellious than most, but that is likely the result of my identity requiring that of me and having parents who also have difficulty with constructs of authority. But I think that this freedom to rebel requires social support and practice. Rebellious nature takes practice. Ideation is a subjective process, and this subjectivity is the most beautiful and rich aspect of the process. I do not think it should be avoided, and I think the mark of a great teacher is in seeing and offering kindness to the subjective nature of developing beautifully divergent ideas.
“Ideation is a subjective process, and this subjectivity is the most beautiful and rich aspect of the process.”
I see in the discussion surrounding higher education and systems that gain the veneer of meritocracies, there is a tendency to obfuscate our responsibility to the subjective by claiming that knowledge and discovery can be an ‘objective’ process. But I would argue that if these institutions want radical solutions, want truly innovative ideas, then the subjective aspect of ideation is critical. It matters that there are faculty members who listen to and care about their students. It matters that there is leadership willing to offer kindness when someone faces difficulties. It matters that some professors can truly be present with their students and give them the space to rebel. As designers, it matters that we do this work of tool development ourselves.
In terms of those who are innovating, I believe that the truly radical and innovative solutions will only come from the people less epistemologically tied to being beneficiaries of the status quo. I fear for what machine learning will become because I see who is getting the funding to do this work, how they think, and the futures they want and fear. I see that they make these tools in their own image, with their own biases and core epistemologies. And in many ways, this is what will inherently limit these tools’ capacity.
“...if we want a radical future worth hoping for, we need to empower the most divergent and rebellious people to think differently in a non-linear, non-hierarchical, non-binary, ecologically-centred, and deeply subjective manner.”
At this moment, there is a trend to dismiss the subjective—to dismiss it as ‘woke’, part of some grand ‘agenda’, or a distraction from the real work. Or claim that our institutions can be meritocracies if we ignore the subjective realm. That we can somehow afford to be chronically incurious about the lives of others. But the reality is that the subjective realm is where ideation occurs. And if we want a radical future worth hoping for, we need to empower the most divergent and rebellious people to think differently in a non-linear, non-hierarchical, non-binary, ecologically-centred, and deeply subjective manner.
Let the myth of ‘objectivity’ die. It is time to fully embrace the subjective realm and see ourselves in each other. To listen, care, play, and rebel. Only then will we get the innovation needed for a future worth dying in and worth leaving to those next who deserve our best efforts.
1. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Harvard University Press, 2010).