Imagining Black Space

“An Afrofuturist depiction of Florida”

I’ve been using DALL-E2 to experiment with creating Afrofuturist visions. The process is imperfect, but it allows me to “see” what A.I. tools default to when it imagines “Afrofuturist/Afrofuturism” in a prompt. This Afrofuturist + Florida image suggests that Afrofuturism has some elements of dystopia. For the record, I believe a warm color pattern is a constant theme in Afrofuturism, but a “dark” hue does not define the visual aesthetic. Nonetheless, the most notable novels linked to Afrofuturism employ dystopian settings. Adding to that, many narratives about Florida would suggest it is a bit of a nightmare. Perhaps the machine is on to something.