Behnaz Farahi stands at an eclectic intersection between culture and technology. Trained as an architect, with specializations in computational design, interactive technologies, additive manufacturing, and digital fabrication, Farahi asks how emerging technologies can allow us to creatively explore the most pressing social and cultural issues of our time, from hierarchies and biases to objectification and bodily perception.
Among these many explorations, Farahi has won particular acclaim for her use of fashion to interrogate and subvert the subject of the male gaze on female bodies. In addition to honors and awards from the Cooper Hewitt, Fast Company, and beyond, Farahi's work has been the subject of several exhibitions, including Returning the Gaze at Milan Fashion Week (2022), Caress of the Gaze at the A+D Museum (2016), and most recently, in the immersive experiences Oneness and Blindness at the CSULB Innovation Space on June 10th, 2023.
In May 2023, Archinect's Niall Patrick Walsh spoke with Farahi on her career of many intersections and contexts, from architecture, fashion, and computation, to questions of surveillance and data on both intimate and urban levels. The discussion, edited slightly for clarity, is published below.
This article is part of the Archinect In-Depth: Artificial Intelligence series.
Niall Patrick Walsh: To begin, could you trace how your career across architecture, technology, fashion, and culture began, and how it manifests now?
Behnaz Farahi: Sure. I am originally from Iran, where I completed my undergraduate and master's degrees in architecture. I then came to the United States for my second master's in architecture at the USC School of Architecture. During that degree, I fully discovered my interest in the fusion of architecture and new technologies, be it robotics, computer vision, or other emerging fields. This set me on a journey of investigating how we can create architecture that is alive and interactive.
Following the next six years, I continued my Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. During that time, I developed a body of work that explored the intersection of architecture, interactive design, and artificial intelligence, which also included fashion. This brings me to today, where alongside my design work, I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Design at California State University, Long Beach.
To me, these are all creative fields; they are all connected to one another. — Behnaz Farahi
It’s been an interesting journey. I went from an architecture school to a cinematic arts school, where one of my Ph.D. advisors was a computer scientist, to teaching in a design department. I always find myself in this weird but eclectic spot between disciplines; my practice situates where these disciplines meet each other. This is what I enjoy most about my career: learning more about these various fields, and combining them through my work.
It’s a fascinating convergence. Do you think you were always destined for this kind of interdisciplinary career, or did it emerge more unexpectedly as your education progressed?
Looking back at my architectural education, I thought I was going to be an architect with a capital A. That said, I was always aware of my interest in art and cinema. Growing up in Iran, I was inspired by Iranian cinema and poetry, and as my career unfolded, I continued to draw on the world of art and cinema for further inspiration. To me, these are all creative fields; they are all connected to one another. Traditionally, education placed each of these fields in its own silo, whether ‘architecture,’ ‘fashion design,’ ‘fine arts,’ ‘cinematic arts,’ and so on. The more I develop my work and explore my passions, the less sense these separate silos of education make to me. In fact, much of the inspiration I had in my younger years across art, cinema, poetry, and design is coming back to me now.
Looking at your work today, there is also a strong interweaving of culture and technology. In the cultural context, you address hierarchies, biases, and relationships, while in the technological context, you address computer vision, interactive design, artificial intelligence, and so on. I’m curious about whether one context leads the other, or if they act in equilibrium. For example, do you begin by identifying cultural issues and asking how technology can intersect with them, or do you begin with new technology and ask what cultural issues it can address?
This is something that has changed throughout my career. My earlier years were about mastering technologies, and understanding how to work with them. Many of my early projects focused on implementing new technologies in an architectural scale or in installation pieces. Through the implementation of those technologies, I was trying to create narratives and stories that unfolded: a story of technological advancements.
Over the last few years, however, cultural, social, and political issues have really informed my practice. There has been a shift in my work towards the notion of critical computation, where my focus is not computation or the use of technology alone but how these technologies can be used for addressing the larger issues of our time. Previously, my focus was on acquiring proficiency in digital design, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and other related fields. However, I have now reached a level of mastery in my practice where I can shift my attention to the question, "What possibilities can we explore using these tools?"
My perspective is now less about how I can use a specific technology, and more about exploring critical issues and asking what technologies I can use to address those issues. — Behnaz Farahi
The last few years have become an opportunity for me to use contemporary cultural issues as a lens for deploying technological tools. My perspective is now less about how I can use a specific technology, and more about exploring critical issues and asking what technologies I can use to address those issues. It's an exciting moment for me, to reach a point where I can address important issues from our contemporary culture.
Here I would like to talk about one of my latest projects which I undertook for Milan Fashion Week. Fashion is an important medium for the production of culture. Yet the fashion industry has long been complicit within a tradition of female objectification and sexual harassment. Women’s bodies are regularly objectified within the fashion industry. Moreover, women have come to absorb this condition unconsciously as a form of the internalized male gaze. But what if women were to subvert this through the power of their gaze?
I explored this scenario through Returning the Gaze during a runway show at Milan Fashion Week. In the center, a female model wears a spacesuit-like outfit and a headpiece fitted with two tiny cameras. The cameras track and capture the movements of the model’s eyes, enlarging and displaying them on four monitors mounted moving around on robotic arms glaring back at the observers. This project brings together robotics, fashion, design, feminism, and critical thinking in order to critique the asymmetry of social and political power relations between men and women.
When you place Returning the Gaze in the context of your broader work, it is clear there is a large variety of technologies, materials, subjects, and scales across your projects. Is it possible to find commonalities in your design process? I can imagine there is a heavy use of physical prototyping in one context. But there is also a strong undercurrent of cultural and design theory in your work that must require heavy research. Is it possible to capture your design approach in a single template regardless of project specificities?
As you mentioned, the design process can vary widely. I’m often working with novel methods, whether that is material developments, digital design, digital fabrication, or robotic fabrication. That said, there is a common interest in making things and prototyping. My earlier projects engaged heavily with digital fabrication and hands-on making. It was through this type of experimentation that I developed novel material properties, and found new ways to express dynamic behaviors. The essence of experimentation remains a part of my process today. I enjoy not knowing where exactly I’m going, and placing myself in a pool of uncertainty where I learn through the process of doing.
With the advent of computer vision, 3D printing, and robotics, there exists an opportunity to revisit some concepts such as 'the male gaze' to give it new life and a new context. — Behnaz Farahi
On the other hand, there is a critical thinking component. This includes exploring texts, articles, and scholarly work in the fields I am interested in. Just as I am inspired by the prototyping and digital fabrication process, I am inspired by exposing myself to a variety of ideas from the world of humanities, art, philosophy, science, and so on. A lot of times, these ideas are abstract. Therefore, I explore how I, as a designer, can capture these ideas in a tangible and concrete manner. How can I give them a new life through the production of new pieces? For example, with my work on the male gaze on the female body, the idea itself is nothing new. The notion of ‘the male gaze’ has existed in visual culture and cinema for many years. With the advent of computer vision, 3D printing, and robotics, there exists an opportunity to revisit some concepts, such as 'the male gaze,' to give it a new life and a new context.
If I were to capture this process in one term, it would be ‘critical making.’ I make projects where the intention is to envision a world where we can address critical issues emerging from feminism, emotions, philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive science, and beyond. Each of these fields is a point of entry for me to address critical issues through design.
A fascinating aspect of your work on the male gaze is how it addresses the question of surveillance, which is central to the current discourse on AI and technology in urbanism. The term ‘surveillance’ in that context immediately elicits a negative reaction predicated on big data, state monitoring of citizens, a lack of privacy, and so on, but your work adds significant nuance to these debates. As you have said when talking about your project Returning The Gaze, surveillance is not inherently good or bad; it means different things to different people. From a feminist starting point, it can become an avenue for empowerment. These words instead derive meaning from how humans use them.
Another fascinating aspect is how you articulate these ideas across several scales: the immediate relationship between a human and their oft-computational garments, then the wider relationship between people such as the gazer and the gazed upon, and then the even wider relationship between people and cities. There’s something powerful about how all of these scales and contexts can be captured in a single garment, object, or scene, and yet all applicable to the single word: ‘surveillance.’
Surveillance is often placed in a broad ‘good or bad’ box. The question we need to ask about surveillance is “in which context” and “for whom.” Who controls surveillance data, and the context in which it is used? The question of governance and control should be decoupled from the tool itself. Consider a kitchen knife. You can use the knife to harm someone, or you can use it to prepare a gourmet meal. I see surveillance in a similar light. The question is not the tool but the context in which we are using it. At the intimate scale of the human body, such as wearables or fashion, it has a different connotation or a different meaning. This is my personal data. The question of whether this data will be shared with a corporate entity is one question, but not the only one. If this data stays with me, it becomes part of my personal space and an augmentation of my body. If it tells me when my body is being gazed at while I’m walking through a dark street at night, then this is extending my biological body.
The question we need to ask about surveillance is “in which context” and “for whom.” — Behnaz Farahi
The notion of AI as a form of augmentation or enhancement is fascinating to me. Who are we empowering when we design for and with surveillance? Which body are we considering? What if it is the body of a female who has been the victim of previous assaults? What if it is the body of an oppressed female who lives in a marginalized community? We can also introduce notions of inclusivity here. How do we include different types of bodies or people with unique needs that haven’t yet been met adequately?
That is all one context. When you then bring surveillance to an urban or architectural scale, you enter another scenario. I once designed a ceiling installation that incorporated a computer vision camera. In addition to the camera, we had microphones that captured activity in the room. At one point, I was working on the installation while having a personal conversation with a colleague. It was only after the conversation that I had the uneasy feeling of wondering who could be listening to me. This question of privacy is an important issue to address on the topic of surveillance and computer vision across architectural and urban scales. Again, here, we have nuance. Urban surveillance brings concerns over privacy rights, but it also brings security.
When we are dealing with the question of surveillance and how we are seen through the lens of a machine, either on the intimate scale or the wider urban scale, we must constantly ask who is being seen, in what context they are being seen, who is seeing them, who is gathering the data, and how the data is being accessed. These are fair questions, but they cannot be answered by immediately jumping to broad conclusions on surveillance in and of itself.
The question is not the tool but the context in which we are using it. — Behnaz Farahi
One related topic to this that we should consider is biometric data. In recent years, and particularly as a result of the COVID pandemic, biometric data has become a part of how we live. So many aspects of our lives are being monitored and captured: sleeping patterns, oxygen levels, blood pressure, and so on. This is also a form of surveillance. Is this surveillance bad, or is it helping us? In a positive scenario, this data can help me to become a better version of myself. It can help me burn calories, become more active, sleep better, and understand my emotional and physical well-being. In a negative scenario, it can become a tool for a totalitarian regime to control citizens. My work is grounded in these nuances. I recognize we have these tools available, and ask how we can use them in new or interesting contexts.
I want to return to something you said earlier when you talked about your use of creative methods to interrogate cultural and technological issues. As you say, these issues can sometimes feel abstract, but framing them through creative media such as fashion, art, or interactive space seems to illicit more provocative, introspective responses for the viewer that a text or conference might not. Your work is strong evidence of this power, and I am wondering if you have thoughts on the potential for creative disciplines, including architecture, to utilize this ability more often, and on more issues?
Architecture is conventionally seen as the act of solving problems. It meets a predefined problem and seeks a solution. I am fascinated not just by solving problems but by identifying, interrogating, and getting to the roots of problems using creative means. In that context, I am inspired by individuals such as Krzysztof Wodiczko and the notion of interrogative design, where he used technology as a way of addressing issues from refugees and immigrant rights to homelessness. It is the act of using art, design, and technology to address larger issues.
I am fascinated not just by solving problems, but by identifying, interrogating, and getting to the roots of problems using creative means. — Behnaz Farahi
For me, it starts with a ‘what if’ question. What if architecture could show this concept in a new way? What if design could spark a conversation about important issues of our time? It is less about ‘how do we solve these issues’ and more about ‘how do we address these issues.’ These are vital questions for humans to ask. We must also avoid a technologically deterministic approach. AI and technology alone will not solve the world’s problems, and yet this is often an outlook we jump to when talking about issues such as housing or unemployment. Instead of claiming that technology will solve the world’s problems, we need to think about how technology can provide certain affordances, and how we can work with those affordances. This is the promise I see in technology for humanity.
One aspect of the future I am really excited about is how AI is democratizing architectural and design education. — Behnaz Farahi
To conclude, how do you see your future as a designer unfolding? You sit at this intersection of technology and culture, both of which shift incredibly fast. Is there an overall mission for you that remains regardless of these shifting sands, or do you somehow see your career evolving into new territory?
I feel that I am always on a journey of discovery. I enjoy putting myself in new territories and opening new paths for myself and my practice. The fashion-related work I am doing has gained heavy recognition, which is exciting, but I am also interested in other scales of operation, such as the public or urban scale. One aspect of the future I am excited about is how AI is democratizing architectural and design education. You no longer need expensive specific software to express yourself. Somebody working with Midjourney in Iran can produce work of the same quality as someone in California. There is a leveling out of access to technology which, although not entirely equal, is nonetheless progressing.
I am excited by how my practice could engage with and help those communities whose voice has not been heard, whether in a form of a public art installation or in a virtual environment. As such, design and technology could be seen as a platform to share their voice; voices which, due to various injustices, have not been heard before. How can I service those communities through my art and design work? That’s where I am going, so let’s see how it unfolds.
Niall Patrick Walsh is an architect and journalist, living in Belfast, Ireland. He writes feature articles for Archinect and leads the Archinect In-Depth series. He is also a licensed architect in the UK and Ireland, having previously worked at BDP, one of the largest design + ...
2 Comments
Incredible. Your words speak around the eyes of international Asian economic prosperity colliding with the end of Modernism in the United States of America. My cultural revolution around the Lion King to be cool has a new wave of young people unaware of past normals that keyed communities correctly. Behnaz, very nice work. Los Angeles needs to keep it’s fashion around Art and patrol Engineering.
Chat gpt?
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