Emily Lai: I ask you a couple of questions about you. Oh, yeah.
Okay, so first one, How has working at Binghamton influenced your own personal practice?
Christopher Swift: So, for me, this has been a big career shift. So I was a practicing graphic designer, prior to coming to Binghamton, so I’ve been a lecturer and an adjunct professor at various schools in America and Canada, but primarily my main focus was on professional studio based design. So the transition for me to Binghamton has been one where I’m able to actually focus very heavily on my research and move away from a client based work so the big change really for me coming to Binghamton has been an ability to focus on different forms of making different experimentation and research.
EL: Okay, cool. So you [would] say like, it’s like allowed you to be more creative.
CS: Time and space to explore and spend time with these ideas and normally, because I was in a situation where clients were paying for my time tabbing time that isn’t paid for doctrine confused, seemed like a waste. If I could be your client work done. So this allows me to kind of make space to focus on these other things I’ve been thinking about for decades.
EL: How has your style changed over time?
CS: So when I first started to design, I wasn’t very confident as a maker so I became very rules focused and obsessed with the kind of the parts of graphic design that have what seemed like yes and no answers. And then my, what has changed is my recognition that tried to control these outputs is ridiculous... not be concerned with a failure or things being wrong and recognize that even wrong things are incredibly valuable.
EL: How does the space around you influence what you do?
CS: So that’s interesting. So I was on a farm, big farm countries. And so I really enjoy my mornings, like the days where I come to teach I always find interesting where we come at six and I go and I will go make a fire in our wood burning stove.
EL: Okay, last question. I’ve always been curious about this, like, how have you been able to I know you use like aI a lot in your work. Like how have you been able to like, embrace that instead of being fearful of it? Yeah.
CS: I think we tend to overemphasize the value of the individual human artist in the process. These other things are very, very important to the process. And so for me, AI, and AI is also currently not necessarily artificial intelligence in the way we think about swaying large language. models. And it is just a huge complicated algorithm. so I find tools again, I don’t scare me, they, I find them to be democratizing, maybe or like lowering the bar, kind of sharing this access that maybe historically has only been purchased y by the wealthy. I don’t think AI is going to destroy the world.