Artwork

📍 Kulturhaus Helferei

Cartography of Generative AI

Estampa Collective

Public discourse on artificial “intelligence” tends toward mythology: algorithms as autonomous agents, technology as inevitable destiny. To challenge these stories, the «Cartography of Generative AI» makes visible the specific extractions, human labour, and resources that enable text generation tools and rapid image production. The work show the tensions and relationships that make AI systems possible, presenting a mosaic of connections. Generative AI becomes visible as an industrial project that begins with raw material extraction, moves through data extraction in cultural industries, and arrives at computing infrastructures whose growing energy demands pose serious threats amid the climate crisis. The map also reveals the workers who label and refine data. It provides a graphic synthesis that supports critical understanding of the political and environmental costs involved.