Always on the Edge: From 4"×5" Negatives to VR Sketch to AI Co-Creation

In a time where information is boundless, credibility is often judged by visual indicators that appear to be evidence. Sometimes, though, a new tool comes along that not only changes what we can produce but also transforms our understanding of what is deemed real and rigorous, affecting who is taken seriously as the landscape evolves.

I’ve learned to recognize that moment by the sound it makes in a room: the quiet tightening when the old rules start to wobble.

1997: Large Format, New Scanners, and the First Precipice

In 1997, I went to Bennington College for my MFA in Photography (Studio Practice).

Photography was on the edge of a precipice. New Agfa scanners were pulling information out of large-format negatives in ways that felt almost indecent to the purists, and digital cameras were beginning to make their debut.

I wanted to be ahead of the curve—not as a gimmick, but as a stance: to stay literate as the medium redefined itself.

So I took my 4"×5" negatives from my field camera, scanned them, and printed them at 4'×5', mounted and exhibition-ready for my final graduate exhibition. It was a difficult experiment for the purists—but a breakthrough for the adventurists.

And looking back, what I remember isn’t just the technology. It’s the social weather around it: the way “craft” can sometimes become a gate, and how quickly innovation gets mistaken for disrespect.

The Pattern: New Tools Trigger Old Reflexes

This is the recurring tension on The Terrain:

• A new tool arrives.

• The tool expands what’s possible.

• Institutions and communities respond with anxiety disguised as standards.

• The debate becomes moral—“real” vs “fake,” “serious” vs “lazy”—before it becomes practical.

This is where visual literacy and anti-intellectualism start to overlap.

Because when a culture is stressed, method can begin to feel like threat. Expertise can start to look like theater. And new tools become an easy target: not because they lack value, but because they disrupt the comfort of established hierarchies.

2019: Using VR as a Design Tool—and Getting the Pushback

In 2019, I wanted to be ahead of the curve again—this time using VR as a design tool inside an immersive environment while pursuing my MLA & EP degree. The pushback was immediate and intense. At one point, a faculty member refused to put on the headset to view my work.

That moment taught me something important: sometimes resistance isn’t about the tool at all—it’s about refusing the evidence the tool makes visible.

That experience led me into research. In the paper I developed, the core question is blunt and practical: Does VR in landscape architecture education enhance student knowledge of construction in a Design/Build studio?

The findings and supporting literature pointed in a direction that felt obvious to anyone who has ever tried to “think in 3D” using only 2D surfaces. The study describes VR as a way to move from virtual explorations to immersive design details and renders, using VR

Sketch to conceptualize ideation in three dimensions, with surveys and observations showing “enhanced learning opportunities.”

It also documents what the post-immersive surveys revealed as recurring themes: informing design decisions, navigation through a design, and increased interest in using VR again and in design classes.

One line still lands with me because it’s both simple and quietly radical: “VR is closer to reality than analog drawings,” and a 360-degree walk-through lets students visualize context, transitional spaces, and site-specific details.

That’s not a novelty claim. That’s a literacy claim.

The Terrain Lesson: Seeing Is Not the Same as Reading

What I’ve learned across these tool shifts—darkroom to scanner, model/drawing to immersive VR—is that “seeing” isn’t the same as “reading.”

• Visual literacy helps us decode what’s in frame.

• Spatial intelligence helps us understand what the frame is doing.

• And critical thinking helps us resist the social forces that tell us not to look too closely.

This is why new tools become flashpoints: they don’t just alter production. They alter what counts as “proof.”

Now: AI as the Next Tool—and the Next Test

Now, in 2026, AI has entered the studio and the classroom in a way that feels inevitable. And I see real potential—especially in art and design—if we treat AI less like an author and more like a co-creator, amplifier, simulator, and sketch partner.

Recent design research is already framing generative AI as a way to support designers across tasks like concept development, renderings, materials exploration, and broader ideation—less replacement, more augmentation. (ScienceDirect)

And on the prototyping side, emerging work on “prototyping with prompts” describes how generative AI can enable rapid iteration, shifting how teams explore and refine ideas in compressed cycles. (arXiv)

But there’s also a warning embedded in the moment: tools that accelerate output can quietly erode process. UNESCO’s guidance on generative AI in education emphasizes the need for a human-centered approach—policies, capacity-building, and safeguards—so that speed doesn’t become the new definition of learning. (UNESCO)

That’s the real question for artists and designers: not “Is AI good or bad?” but—

What kind of thinking does it reward? What kind of thinking does it weaken? What happens to discernment when production becomes effortless?

Anti-Intellectualism in the Studio: When Curiosity Becomes Suspicion

Every tool transition comes with a predictable narrative:

• “This isn’t real work.”

• “This is cheating.”

• “You’re skipping the fundamentals.”

• “This will make everyone the same.”

Sometimes those critiques are valid. Sometimes they’re a defense mechanism—fear of losing status masquerading as standards.

Anti-intellectualism doesn’t always show up as anti-education. Sometimes it shows up as anti-method: a resistance to learning new literacies because learning threatens the identity built on old ones.

And the cost isn’t theoretical.

The cost is that we stop experimenting in public. We stop prototyping ideas. We stop expanding the language of the medium. We protect the map key and ignore the fact that the terrain has changed.

Terrain Lens: Reading New Tools Without Worshipping Them

When you feel the cultural heat around a new tool—AI included—try this lens:

1. What problem does this tool actually solve—and for whom?

2. What new errors does it introduce (hallucination, flattening, sameness, dependency)?

3. What does it make easier to see that was hard to see before?

4. What skills become more important (prompting, curation, judgment, verification, taste)?

5. Where is the resistance coming from—craft, ethics, hierarchy, or fear?

Redrawing the Map, Again

In 1997, scanning large-format negatives felt like stepping off a ledge—and discovering there was ground on the other side.

In 2019, working in VR revealed how much of design education still relies on translation: from 3D reality into 2D artifacts, and back again. The research around VR as a design tool argued for immersive learning as a legitimate extension of how we conceptualize and make decisions.

Now, AI is here—another precipice. Another test of whether we can stay literate as the medium changes.

I’m not interested in replacing craft. I’m interested in expanding it.

link to RESEARCH

Where do you feel the newest “precipice” in your own creative practice right now—and what would it look like to approach it with curiosity instead of defense?