Sascha Pohflepp's "Blind Camera" project from 2006 is a brilliant exploration of this question, and its relevance is more pronounced than ever in today's AI-driven world, particularly in the context of image generation and manipulation.
Now today we have a Poetry Camera that prints poems of what it sees, and Matt Webb's Poem/1 delayed Kickstarter project that generates poems that rhyme the the time of day.
These projects, like Pohflepp's Blind Camera, are examples of ways of casting our imaginative consciousness into new terrains of possibility — and doing so in a material way that is tangible and experiential. And they are specifically expeditionary because we never expect for these to become commercial products. They are provocations, explorations, and experiments that challenge our conventional understanding of what a camera is, what a poem is, and how we relate to images and text in the world.
These are further proof points on the value of this kind of ‘Cultural R&D’ and an argument for installing expeditionary teams like this within the companies that are driving AI forward. The 17+ years of experience I have had creating software and hardware products with this kind of expeditionary consciousness has led me to believe that this kind of work — particularly at the shore of a new and vast new terrain of possibility — is essential for navigating the unknowns and opportunities that lie ahead.
Are you working in this kind of exploratory space — running a lab, building prototypes, wondering what AI might mean for creativity — I’d love to exchange notes. My own work has lived for years in that overlap of imagination, prototyping, and organizational learning, and I’m always interested in what others are uncovering there.
I once overheard a poet say, “The primary purpose of poetry is to keep the vision of childhood alive into adulthood.”
That line stuck with me.
It’s saying that poetry, at its core, preserves the imaginative sense of wonder and possibility we had before we learned to see the world in conventional, adult ways. It keeps the world strange and alive.
So no wonder that some of the earliest and most persistent explorations of AI-generated content have been in the realm of poetry. Poetry, with its emphasis on metaphor, emotion, and the ineffable, seems to resonate with the capabilities and limitations of AI in interesting ways.
We’re all tramping around in this new terrain called AI, right?
On one side of the perimeter are the c-corps, trying to make it valuable in the most familiar way:
That’s cool. I get that. We all need folding money, including me and you, and even if you think you don’t need it, you want it and probably you want more of it even if you literally do not need more of it.
As David Mamet once wrote “Of course everyone wants money; that’s why they call it ‘money’”
On the opposite side of the perimeter of meaning and value are the art-corps, all in a bit of conflict, confusion and fully in expeditionary mode, in a very familiar way:
But what’s this got to do with Sascha Pohflepp’s Blind Camera project from way back in 2006? It itself has a distinctive — well, what we might say is a “poetic” — quality to it. Press the camera button — the shutter — and instead of taking your own photo, it takes someone else’s photo taken at the same moment somewhere else in the world.
If you know, you know this is pretty cool — and was way ahead of its time. And could only live in the era of the Open Web, accessible (and free) APIs, and a culture of sharing and remixing that went by Web 2.0.
Now, today, we have this Poetry Camera. Both this and Sascha’s camera reinterpret what a camera is and does. The Poetry Camera doesn’t take your picture; it generates a poem about what it sees. It’s playful, thoughtful — a kind of mechanical reverie.
The cousin project in this context might be Matt Webb’s Poem/1 clock, which tells time as rhyming verse. All of these are objects that translate our structured world into something dreamlike and strange — as if to remind us that wonder and the curiosity we may likely have had when we were children still exists.
These projects are not useful in the “efficiency” sense. They’re useful in the human sense. They perform a kind of translation — from the adult world of productivity into the childlike world of possibility.
“What time is it?” “I’d rather be told in a poem.”
“What am I seeing?” “I’d rather see it transformed into words that make me feel something.”
That’s the work of imagination — the same impulse that drives art, design, and speculative prototyping.
Now, I’m being deliberately quite a bit provocative and by provocative I actually mean snarky.
The fact of the matter is that the provocation/snark is a mix of professional jealousy — I’d love to have Anthropic or similar commission something curious like this from Near Future Laboratory in order to help shape the public consciousness about what an AI-soaked world could be like — as I am more-or-less fully on board with this approach to exploring ways to imagine into possibility.
That is what I’ve been saying for decades now; most recently with the collection of posts on the value of speculative prototyping as a form of Cultural R&D. And the point of all that is that places like Anthropic (and etcetera) should be doing this as a matter of course. (P.S. I am available to help them do that, and I have the 17+ years of experience to prove it. If anyone can advocate for this kind of work within these organizations, I’d appreciate you pointing them my way.)
(I suppose there is a bit of an absence of a nod to the long legacy of these kinds of art-technology explorations, and I will not give up on trying to remind us all in a productive way of that long legacy, and even use it as a basis for arguing for more of these kinds of experiments not just in the “art” world (wherever that world is) but specifically in the realms I enjoy inhabiting in the commercial context.)
It is, I think, the underlying premise that is worth considering: having these kinds of explorations and experiments into possibility is how we make sense of this vast terrain we are clearly entering and for which there is no map. Experiments of this sort are how we begin to chart the unknown. They are how we begin to understand what is possible, what is desirable — and provide one with a kind of strategic advantage in navigating the unknown.
The creative consciousness — the imaginative consciousness — is well-equipped to explore this vast unknown.
That’s why things like Sascha’s Blind Camera and the Poetry Camera and Poem/1 matter. They are not just frivolous or playful or indulgent. They are essential explorations of possibility that help us understand and navigate this new terrain. And doing these things hands-on — as prototypes of possibility — that is where I want to be.
I admire all of these projects even as I wonder about how they can be done more in collaboration with the organizations that are driving AI forward in the more conventional commercial sense.
Why do I think that? Why am I not fully and adamantly opposed to the c-corps and their drive for folding money?
Because the 17+ years of professional experience at the intersection of design, technology, engineering, capital, product and the Silicon Valley consciousness has taught me that these two seemingly opposite edges of this terrain are not really opposite at all. They are two sides of the same coin. They are both necessary for the evolution of our understanding and our ability to navigate this new world. You have the edges where conflict and contention prevail, but there has to be a way to bring these two kinds of consciousness together in a way that is productive and generative — and that can only happen if there is a mutual respect and understanding of the value that each edge brings to the table.
People gotta eat, and People gotta dream.
Real progress happens when those two edges meet — when imagination becomes a legitimate mode of research, not just decoration.
That’s why projects like Blind Camera, Poetry Camera, and Poem/1 matter. They’re not frivolous. They’re necessary. They remind us that AI isn’t only about automation; it’s also about re-enchantment.
Design Fiction lets us visit the future from the present. That’s what Sascha did back in 2006 with Blind Camera. It’s what we need to keep doing now — to stay imaginative in a world that risks forgetting how.
Because the future is not predictable or linear.
It’s not even “the future” in the way we mean it.
It’s another world entirely — one that requires imagination just to reach the edge of it.
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