work - space roastery 3023

Space Roastery 3023: Seoul Cafe Show ☕️

At the 22nd Seoul Café Show, I presented Space Roastery 3023, a speculative exhibition envisioning how coffee culture might transform a thousand years into the future. Rather than treating coffee simply as a beverage, the work approached it as a social, ecological, and technological artifact-one that reveals how human desires, cultural rituals, and environmental pressures might evolve alongside advances in AI.

I also joined the Coffee Talk program at the Starfield COEX Mall Library, where I shared a dialogue on the future of coffee and AI.

Credit
Heather Hyerin Im

Date
2023

Client
Seoul Café Show

A thousand years from now, what kind of coffee will people drink, in what kinds of spaces, and for what purposes? ☕️

The exhibition introduced five fictional coffee species, each accompanied by AI-generated imagery and physical 3D models. These speculative varieties explored how future conditions (rising sea levels, off-planet agriculture, or extreme consumption behaviors) could give rise to new forms of cultivation and cultural meaning.

By collaborating with generative models to construct these narratives, the work examined how AI can expand our imaginative capacity, prompting visitors to reflect on the interplay between human taste, technological mediation, and planetary change.

These fictional coffee varieties imagine how environmental and social issues (if intensified over the next thousand years) might shape the evolution of coffee. For example:

a mutant gigantic bean discovered on Mars, developed after rising sea levels make coffee cultivation on Earth nearly impossible,
a special bean for “Pup-puccinos”, grown specifically for dogs,
and a hyper-caffeinated variety designed for humans addicted to extreme doses of caffeine.

Across the installation, AI served not simply as a visual tool but as a partner for rethinking how humans project values, fears, and aspirations into food systems. Through speculative storytelling, the exhibition encouraged audiences to consider what happens when everyday cultural practices (like drinking coffee) are reframed through technological and environmental futures.

I also gave a public talk at the Starfield COEX Library, discussing the conceptual development of the project and the role of AI in visualizing long-term futures. The session opened a dialogue on how creative AI can help us question present-day systems and envision more pluralistic possibilities for the future of human culture.

Press:
https://sprudge.com/inside-the-incredible-coffee-alley-at-seoul-international-cafeshow-222619.html
https://www.sommeliertimes.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=125876
https://kr.aving.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=1785488
https://dailycoffeenews.com/2023/11/01/thousands-of-coffee-professionals-heading-to-cafe-show-seoul-2023/