World Wind

2022

80″ x 80″ wallpaper mural, edition of 6

World Wind is a mural made by Zurkow in collaboration with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence software that creates images from textual descriptions. Through a prompt by the artist to the software—”World War II agitprop map of pollution and climate change”—World Wind incorporates AI’s perception of climate change with the artist’s guidance, editing, and direction. Zurkow positions iconography representative of ecological transformation within a style reminiscent of lithography and propaganda. Bordered by bold red and thick lettering, the work suggests both a reference to the past and a nod towards an inevitable future. Summoned through open source data and artificial intelligence, wind is a personification of global entanglement and a harbinger of change.