Martin Summers' Artificial Intelligence Research Exhibited at UT Austin

Martin responded to an invitation by Clay Odom to submit new research for an exhibition that ran parallel to the Weather Symposium, hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition call asked for work that fit within the conference theme or could be new work made specifically for the conference. Mr. Summers used the opportunity to take a prior experiment regarding mid-century modern architecture and furniture that produced some surreal results and to further iterate the image through alternative Artificial Intelligence pathways.

Text that accompanied the image submission:

Martin Summers

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The image is from a series based around the concept of mid-century modern furniture in a Southwestern landscape of strange objects. This initial prompt led to further revisions and iterations and an expedition “down the rabbit hole” of Midjourney. Architecture appears as a folly to contain the furniture, though the architecture itself is at the scale of furniture. The picture on the wall was unprompted and the images inside exhibited another strange “reality,” stranger than the folly in the landscape. I followed the path of the photograph iterations and chose the ones with the most anomalous features, not the most “real,” but ones that exhibited hallucinations along the line of the sixth finger of prior generations of AI. The figures in the frame would provide a visual foil and a literal glitch in the matrix allowing us to perceive the mediation while simultaneously inviting us into the image within the frame and its details. The figures existing between realities much like myself in the process. The frame is within the frame of the room/architecture folly, within the frame of the images aspect ratio. In a later iterative sequence, I used a sequence of recent Adobe Photoshop AI features to expand, zoom, remove/move objects, and add objects that blended into the lighting and environment of the scene. In this way AI was an ever-present filter through which I engaged in this imagined world.  

The image was further layered with visual references that alludes to an escape from a desperate “reality,” into the frame on the wall, only to discover that we cannot escape our own environment as we tend to bring with us the all to human issues that produced our current crisis. Weather as a theme for the interior is present in the harshness of the environment, its effect on the objects, the interior that is exterior with an interior to the painting that frames another exterior. What does it mean to be interior, knowing that if we are still, we become aware of our own interior which feels as expansive and limitless as the universe. “The Treachery of Images,” ce n'est pas un intérieur.

Exhibit Text From UT Austin Website:

An exhibition of works by leading architects, designers, and artists in the field accompanies the symposium and is on view from Friday, November 7 to Friday, November 21, 2025 in Mebane Galley of Goldsmith Hall. Titled Meteorologic Imaginaries and designed and curated by Ria Bravo, Clay Odom, and Igor Siddiqui, the exhibition features thematically resonant contributions by Rana Abudayyeh, Alexandra Arènes, Daniel Barber, Natalie Boverman, Danelle Briscoe, Amy Campos, Chris Cornelius, Patrick Danahy, Nancy Diniz & Frank Melendez,  Anda & Jenny French, Marcelyn Gow, Michelle Boyoung Huh, Aleksandra Jaeschke, Lydia Kallipoliti & Areti Markopoulou, Brian Kelly, Karel Klein, Lindsey Krug, Perry Kulper, Sean Lally,  Elena Manferdini, Adam Marcus, Victoria McReynolds, Adam Miller, Kendra Ordia, Ryan Roark, Zahra Safaverdi, Virginia San Fratello, Charles Sharpless & Jessica Colangelo, Anya Sirota, Andrea Sosa Fontaine, Martin Summers, Liz Teston & Catty Zhang,  Hans Tursack, Tania Ursomarzo, Barry Wark, Leah Wulfman, Liam Young, and others. 

The symposium is organized by UT Austin School of Architecture faculty Ria Bravo, Tara Dudley, Nerea Feliz, Allison Gaskins, Clay Odom, and Igor Siddiqui (symposium chair), in collaboration with Pratt Institute faculty Anca Lasc, Deborah Schneiderman, Keena Suh, and Karyn Zieve. 

This event will be live streamed on our YouTube. This event is free and open to the public, and does not require pre-registration.

MATTERPORT Exhibition View from UT Austin: LINK