Research & Education / Collaboration

Modern Mythos started as a question, what happens when AI stops trying to imitate culture and starts learning from it?

Developed from Design Festival workshops in Sri Lanka and Bali, the project brings traditional craft mask makers, art and design students, and technologists together to explore how craft and AI can work together. Sri Lankan Ves Muhunu and Balinese Topeng masks become datasets, not to extract, but to learn from, teaching AI the rhythms of lineage, devotion, tribal knowledge and care.

What drives me here is the idea of AI as a collaborator, not coloniser, a tool that learns respect before replication. Every digital “twin”, a  trained dataset, generated by consent, with lineage notes that travel back to its craft maker.

From art school studios to global design conferences, Modern Mythos keeps asking the same question, how can technology help preserve heritage as something living, not just archive what is lost? Because heritage is never static, it’s alive, breathing, adapting, re-materialising itself into the future, shaping new craft narratives for a digital age.