As part of Science Week the National Botanic Gardens are hosting an exhibition of indigenous visual art made with Generative-AI from Sunday the 10th to Sunday the 17th November.

What dreams, aspirations, and wishes would you like to become real in 20 years? These were the original questions posed in early 2023 to sixteen members of indigenous communities from South America. Among them were visual artists, spiritual leaders, intellectuals, environmentalists and activists from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. Their answers provide a glimpse into imaginary worlds filled with aspirations for a life in balance with nature, peaceful collaboration between peoples, futuristic indigenous communities, and other visions that you can see on display in this exhibition.

The images were created using Generative Artifical Intelligence model MidJourney, based on textual prompts that describe participants visions. Each poster includes images (in upscaled resolution for large print), the textual prompt used to generate the images, the name of the author of the prompt, as well as the date and version of the Gen-AI model used. 

The material was created as part of the project Artifical Intelligence, Art amd Indigenity, a practice-based collaborative project by Andreas Rauh from Dublin CIty University and Thea Pitman from the University of Leeds, alongside the Brazilian NGO Thydêwá and the Indigenous participants Lucián de Silenttio, Nicolás Jiménez Reyes (Azul), Haylly Zamora Aray, Kuenan Mayu Tikuna, Loreto Millalén, Mariela Tulián, Nhenety Kariri-Xocó, Tadeu Kaingang, Ayra Ymboré, Hangorroy Ymboré, Wera Moru, Kadu Tapuya and Horácio Ayala.