Vernacular Visions is a commissioned work created for UNICEF, presented at the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken as part of the exhibition “MAKE. FUTURE. HAPPEN. – Empowering the Young by Shaping a Better Future with Your Visions.”
The exhibition brings together the work of international creators using artificial intelligence as a creative tool to inspire, motivate, and empower younger generations through visions of a better tomorrow.
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Why is progress frequently defined by hyper-advanced technologies, while the tools, knowledge, and solutions already available to us are overlooked or dismissed?
Vernacular Visions emerges from this tension. Rather than projecting far-off utopias, the project questions whether many contemporary visions of the future truly aim to solve real-world issues - or if they merely showcase technological prowess and aesthetic sophistication. While these speculative images can be inspiring, they often risk feeding collective imagination more than generating tangible impact.
By focusing exclusively on spectacular technological achievements, we may delay meaningful action, overlooking simpler, more immediate interventions capable of improving lives today.
Our project proposes an alternative perspective on futurism - one that is grounded, empathetic, and rooted in existing knowledge. Instead of imagining progress as something that only exists in the future, Vernacular Visions explores how meaningful change can begin now, using accessible, local, and human-centered solutions.
The work addresses fundamental global challenges such as pollution, education, global waste, and access to culture, emphasizing that these issues do not require distant technological revolutions to be tackled. They require attention, care, and the willingness to revalue vernacular practices and collective intelligence.
Vernacular Visions consists of three distinct art pieces, each reflecting on a basic human need we consider essential to building a better tomorrow. Through an optimistic lens, the works reveal present-day societal challenges while proposing possible paths forward - not as definitive answers, but as hopeful provocations.
Artificial intelligence is used not as an end in itself, but as a tool for reflection, helping visualize alternative futures that remain deeply connected to real people, real places, and real problems. The resulting images balance speculation with familiarity, suggesting futures that feel achievable rather than abstract.
Ultimately, Vernacular Visions is a call to rethink how we define progress. It invites viewers — especially younger generations — to imagine futures that are not only technologically impressive, but socially responsible and culturally aware.
This project is our humble contribution to opening a dialogue about dominant narratives of innovation and advancement, and to advocating for a vision of the future that begins with listening, observing, and caring for the world as it exists today.
