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Living Surface


Transforms static AI images into living surfaces





  • Role: 
    Graphic designer
    Prompt engineer 

  • When:
    Feb 5-6, 2026
  • Focus: 
    Design x AI
    Human AI collaboration
    Computation creativity 

  • Tools: 
    ChatGPT
    Nano banana
    Veo3


  • Overview:
    Living Surface is a system that transforms AI-generated artworks into dynamic wallpapers.

    Each work preserves a fixed composition while allowing internal elements—texture, glyphs, pixel noise, and painterly surfaces—to subtly animate over time. The image remains visually still, yet perceptually alive. A central component of the project is the reverse engineering of master prompts from finished images, using AI to translate static artworks into time-based, rule-governed visual systems.





    Key Idea:
    Prompt Reverse Engineering as Translation:

    Starting from a finished AI-generated image, I reconstruct a high-level prompt that captures:

    • visual hierarchy
    • material qualities (oil paint, blur, grain)
    • abstraction layers (ASCII glyphs, pixelation, monochrome masking)
    • compositional constraints (static frame, no camera movement)

    This reconstructed prompt is then used to generate a time-based version of the same artwork, where motion is constrained by the logic of the original image rather than imposed afterward.

    In this process, AI functions as a translator between media:

    • image → language
    • language → motion
    • painting → ambient system

    This translation is intentionally imperfect and experimental, embracing loss, distortion, and reinterpretation.




    Outcome:

    The final works exist as dynamic wallpapers—images that remain compositionally stable while quietly evolving. They are designed to be lived with, not watched.

    By combining prompt reverse engineering with constrained animation, Living Surface proposes a slower, more material future for AI-generated art:
    one where images are not consumed, but inhabited.










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