Kinfolk Tech has built an interactive station for a New York festival where visitors sit at a desk, a typewriter, and three card stacks labeled Wisdom, Courage, and Love. The typewriter answers questions by pointing to cards from those stacks and then types out a poetic reflection, generated from Baldwin’s archive.
The installation is part of “KIN: A Festival of Memory and Imagination,” a larger exhibition covering Baldwin’s writing, essays, and letters. Kinfolk, a nonprofit focused on immersive technology and public art, designed the software. Its past work includes augmented reality monuments of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer figures, fellowships on community memory, and archival projects around storytelling.
Baldwin’s Words, Delivered Through a Typewriter
The station itself is simple. Visitors ask a question, and the AI picks three cards from the Wisdom, Courage, and Love stacks. Then the typewriter prints out a poetic response drawn from Baldwin’s archive.
Elsewhere in the room, a radio, TV, and record player play Baldwin’s words directly. That pairing — Baldwin’s recorded voice alongside the typewriter’s printed words — is the heart of the installation.
Idris Brewster, Kinfolk’s founder, described the project as “a ‘poetic intervention’ to slow people down long enough to reflect on the partnership between humans and machines.”
Why the Reaction Against AI Is Directed Elsewhere
James Folta, the writer who reviewed the installation, admits his first instinct was to recoil at the combination of AI and Baldwin. But he argues that the problem is not this particular project. The trouble, he writes, is a broader “pro-AI tech culture that has discredited AI and its public image.”
He points to “the week the AI freakout went mainstream,” noting that tech companies have spent years inventing problems and leaving the consequences to the public. He wonders whether the executives are lying to boost stocks and egos, or if they truly believe they are engineering our doom.
The Pattern of Hollywood Defensiveness
Folta draws a parallel to Hollywood, where certain men treat method acting as a badge of identity politics. He cites Angelica Jade Bastién, who wrote in The Atlantic that method acting has become wrapped up in a brand of identity politics that tries to make the art form resemble more traditional forms of male labor.
In the same way, Folta sees insecurity behind the cries of “we’re too smart!” and “we’re building a bomb.” In practice, he writes, they are just on the computer.
What the Public Thinks of AI Now
Many people see AI now and think only of its unethical creation and deployment. They think of the loudest voices cheering on the technology’s worst effects: jobs lost, the planet damaged, lives destroyed.
That negative framing makes it harder for quieter, more humane uses of machine learning to find space. A typewriter that quotes James Baldwin should not have to fight against a public image shaped by the worst people in the world.
Related Work From Kinfolk
Kinfolk’s portfolio runs across multiple formats:
- Augmented reality monuments of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer figures
- Fellowships on community memory
- Archival projects around storytelling
A Quiet Use of a Loud Technology
The Baldwin typewriter is a quiet use of a loud technology. It asks nothing of the visitor except a question. It gives back a poem.
That restraint is rare in today’s maximalist AI. Most deployments try to do everything at once — answer questions, generate images, simulate conversations. This one simply quotes Baldwin.
The installation includes the desk, the typewriter, the three card stacks, and the audio equipment playing Baldwin’s words. The review focuses on the typewriter’s role in connecting visitors to Baldwin’s archive.
The backlash is aimed at the wrong target. The tech bosses, boosters, and accelerationists who have poisoned the well about AI are the ones who deserve the anger, not a nonprofit using the technology to preserve community memory.
That distinction matters. It is the difference between protecting a writer’s reputation and defending a company’s profits. The typewriter is a tribute. The noise comes from elsewhere.
The festival runs in New York, and the installation is part of a larger exhibition about Baldwin’s writing. For those who come after, it offers a quiet moment of reflection — a question, three cards, and a poem from the past.
Whether the public can see past the noise to appreciate it is another matter entirely.
Key Facts
– Installation title: “For Those Who Come After”
– Festival: “KIN: A Festival of Memory and Imagination” in New York
– Software designer: Kinfolk Tech, a nonprofit
– Founder: Idris Brewster
– Card stacks: Wisdom, Courage, Love
Kinfolk’s Past Work
– Augmented reality monuments of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer figures
– Fellowships on community memory
– Archival projects around storytelling