Pictogram Program stands as a digital sartorial creation using the AI painting program, Disco Diffusion. Within this exquisite collection, Yawen artfully delves into the concept that errors and serendipitous occurrences possess the innate potential to metamorphose into captivating design elements.
The process involves inputting a text description for the program to create a picture using an existing database. She noticed an interesting quirk in the algorithm when using Chinese characters—it recognized only part of the text and preserved the glyph part, resembling ancient Chinese characters. Intrigued by this "accident," Yawen replicated the process by entering more Chinese characters, generating numerous pictures. To enhance control, she specified the use of the Chinese character "bamboo" to generate a Chinese Shanshui painting with a green and black color scheme.
To make the results more practical, she incorporated these unexpected elements into digital fashion design, extracting glyph elements from the pictures, recombined them, and produced new Chinese-style clothing. The goal was to turn the original glitch into an innovative clothing pattern, allowing AI-generated patterns to define their own forms. Throughout the collaboration with the algorithm, Yawen documented the entire process to serve as a guide for future translations.