Ceta

This project takes its name from the clipped beginnings of ceramic and table—a stripped-back, utilitarian title for a work defined by precision and restraint. Each image presents a unique pairing: a ceramic vessel and a carefully chosen piece of furniture. Where Forma focused solely on ceramic forms, Ceta opens up the frame—introducing tables, pedestals, and stools as co-stars. The vessels vary in scale and finish, from smooth celadon to cratered volcanic, while furniture references range from Danish modernism to Japanese folk craft. Though entirely digital, these objects appear remarkably plausible—pieces that seem not only real, but desirable. Nothing here exists in the physical world, yet everything obeys its logic. The proportions are balanced. The textures are convincing. The lighting is honest. What emerges is part still life, part product study, part conceptual exercise in how far an idea can go.

But the work is not purely visual—it’s also linguistic. Every detail began as a sentence, every image as a prompt: researched, composed, revised, and refined. The project would not exist without language. Nor would it exist without collaboration—between myself, ChatGPT-4o, and Flux Pro 1.1 Ultra. The AI was pushed hard: forty distinct pairings produced without repetition or collapse. In this process, I’m less a potter or designer than a director of instructions—choreographing two AI models with unnatural fluency, squeezing language until form appears. There’s satisfaction in testing the limits of the system—seeing how specific, how subtle, how convincing an output can become. Ceta is the result of that pressure. Not a meditation, but a process. The images are calm, but the engine behind them is relentless. It’s a quiet study in creative extraction.

Ceta is ultimately a project about trust—not in objects, but in processes. These images are not photographs, and the objects do not exist in three dimensions. They may look like real things in real rooms—but don’t be fooled. The more authentic the image, the more fabricated its origin. These are synthographic constructs: simulations made with artificial intelligence. And yet, for all its fluency, AI remains a tool—one that many still view with suspicion. There is understandable anxiety around authorship, labour, and originality. But in the realm of product design, its speed is undeniable. If I were prototyping furniture or form, this process might act like a sketchbook—fast, generative, endlessly iterative. A potter or carpenter may not turn to AI for ideas, but the possibility is there. Ceta is not proof of replacement, but of potential—of how digital tools might shape the earliest moments of making, long before anything is touched by hand.