Immanent Drift

“Immanent Drift” is an audiovisual installation that seeks to develop new imaginaries within the artistic tradition of Persian calligraphy while offering counter-narratives to Western-centric dominant AI aesthetics. Immanent Drift approaches emerging technology as a site of active engagement, using generative systems to reclaim aesthetic agency and to make sense of the hybrid conditions formed at the intersection of culture, craft, and computation. The work brings visual and sonic modalities of calligraphic practice into dialogue, treating calligraphy not as a fixed visual outcome but as a continuum unfolding between image, sound, gesture, and time. Trained on carefully crafted, small-scale datasets, the interconnected generative systems foreground form, rhythm, and accumulation over legibility, offering an alternative to dominant AI aesthetics shaped by large-scale, generalized models. Operating within the entanglement of tradition and technology, Immanent Drift reflects on how cultural knowledge is mediated, translated, and transformed through computational processes, while creating an immersive, multisensory environment that invites sustained, contemplative engagement.