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by Didem Ozdemir, May 30th. 2025 Rapid urbanization, rising populations, and expanding economies have resulted in a huge increase in worldwide waste output. Without significant changes in trash generation trends, the total amount of waste produced worldwide is expected to exceed 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050. This expanding waste problem contributes to pollution, waste management challenges, and recycling inefficiencies, putting a significant strain on municipalities.(3) Effective waste management can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, making it an important step in combating climate change.(4) Waste management tactics have progressed from simple dumping procedures to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” approaches and integrated systems. More recently, the emphasis has switched to resource management, with the circular economy concept gaining popularity by treating waste as a useful resource.(2) Artificial intelligence (AI) has improved efficiency and accessibility in healthcare, work environments, and disability support, while also increasing workplace safety. While AI is still being debated due to worries about privacy, job displacement, and the potential for abuse, its benefits in a variety of industries are apparent. (9) AI can help with high-pressure decision-making with tools such as virtual assistants, virtual reality, process discovery, task mining, and advanced data analytics. Additionally, AI enhances quality of life, particularly for people with disabilities.(5) If not adequately developed, these systems can produce unjust results. Furthermore, as AI increasingly influences personal decisions—from shopping habits to political beliefs—it is critical to be conscious of its impact in order to avoid being overly reliant on automated recommendations.(7) AI is making a significant impact on waste management, assisting cities in effectively addressing the worldwide challenge. Municipalities can save money, increase recycling rates, and protect the environment by incorporating AI-driven solutions into waste collection, sorting, and recycling procedures. These AI-powered systems are improving trash management efficiency, sustainability, and responsiveness to urban needs.(1) Waste management strategies include reducing, recycling, composting, reusing resources, using renewable energy, and deploying green technologies.(3) Waste-sorting robots, for example, improve recycling efficiency by classifying items more accurately. AI can provide three key prospects for a circular economy: 1. designing circular products, components, and materials; 2. operating circular business models; and 3. optimizing infrastructure for circular material flows.(2) The textile and apparel sector, despite its economic and cultural importance, suffers significant waste management issues. Fast fashion, poor manufacturing processes, and inadequate recycling systems result in massive amounts of textile waste ending up in landfills or incineration. This linear “take-make-dispose” cycle is unsustainable; it depletes natural resources, pollutes ecosystems, and contributes to climate change. AI provides a powerful answer to waste management across industries, including textiles, by facilitating the shift to sustainability. From optimizing material utilization in the design phase to enhancing recycling processes, AI improves waste sorting, demand forecasting, and circular economy activities.(8) By leveraging AI, businesses achieve greater sustainability and resource efficiency. Sources (1) Editorial Journalist @Viva Technology (2024) How AI Is Improving Waste Management. https://vivatechnology.com/news/how-ai-is-improving-waste-management?t=0 (2) Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation (2019) AI In Waste - AI and The Circular Economy https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/artificial-intelligence-and-the-circular-economy (3) Fang, B., Yu, J., Chen, Z. et al. Artificial intelligence for waste management in smart cities: a review. Environ Chem Lett 21, 1959–1989 (2023). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01604-3 (4) Linde, N., Balian, A., Shabatura, T., Gryshova, I., Yakovenko, A., and Hnatieva, T. (2024). Artificial Intelligence in Waste Management in the Context of Implementing Circular Economy. Grassroots. Journal of Natural Resources, 7(3): s149-s172 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387601557_Artificial_Intelligence_in_Waste_Management_in_the_Context_of_Implementing_Circular_Economy (5) Purdy, M., Williams, A. M. (2023) How AI Can Help Leaders Make Better Decisions Under Pressure. Harward Business Review (6) https://hbr.org/2023/10/how-ai-can-help-leaders-make-better-decisions-under-pressure?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=intlcontent_strategy&utm_term=Non-Brand&tpcc=intlcontent_strategy&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD9b3uSTW6Hccw6gwpMRxRs7H-MAb&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhMq-BhCFARIsAGvo0Kdi7cLsYiNc57Hes2DAzMdgmFFvTnf0k2S0Q37V7OO7Rv3J9_kIf20aAoDxEALw_wcB (7) Rho, E. (2023) AI—The good, the bad, and the scary. Virginia Tech Engineer https://eng.vt.edu/magazine/stories/fall-2023/ai.html (8) Sustainability Directory (2023) How Can Ai Reduce Textile Waste? https://sustainability-directory.com/question/how-can-ai-reduce-textile-waste/ (9) The Editors of ProCon Britannica (2025) Artificial Intelligence (AI): Is Artificial Intelligence Good for Society? https://www.britannica.com/procon/artificial-intelligence-AI-debate ers, which not only reflects their uniqueness but also the newest trends. The original “Waste Not” is a Terreform Project by the late Michael Sorkin (architect, urbanist, critic, and educator).Didem Ozdemir is the project’s chief investigator. @dekosg

By Vida Sabbaghi, May 30th, 2025 In a world where art, fashion, and technology collide, COPE NYC’s involvement in Fashion Week Brooklyn represents a radical shift in the role of creative reuse, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration. As the netherlands worldwideorganization extends its reach beyond traditional exhibition spaces and into the dynamic sphere of fashion, its engagement with students, recent graduates, and professionals is creating new opportunities for dialogue on sustainability and innovation. At the heart of this initiative is an investment in the next generation of creative thinkers—students from the Harlem School of the Arts, including Amechi Chukwujiorah-Strange, Nana Adwoa Agyemang, and Maddie Trevor, who have, under COPE NYC’s guidance, transformed discarded materials into display mannequins for the runway. Through a process that underscores sustainability as a necessity rather than an aesthetic afterthought, these students employ creative reuse as a medium, challenging the conventions of fashion presentation. The result? Mannequins that are not just objects, but conceptual statements—commentary on the disposability of consumer culture and the potential of discarded materials to tell new stories. This collaboration’s reach extends beyond students. COPE NYC has also engaged professionals within five years of graduation, offering them opportunities to work alongside industry figures and expand their portfolios while confronting the urgency of material consciousness. This initiative positions itself as a bridge between academic training and the demands of professional practice, embedding young designers in real-world applications of sustainability in fashion. One of the most striking interventions in Fall 2024’s Fashion Week Brooklyn was a collaborative project between COPE NYC that involved landscape architecture, AI-generated design, and fashion. Landscape architect Si Chen utilized the AI platform MidJourney to collaborate with COPE NYC’s design team—including fashion designer Sherleen Montan—to create a series of suspended paper sculptures in off-white, an ethereal installation for the runway. These sculptures, which oscillated between organic and digital realms, raise pressing questions about AI’s role in design. Is AI merely an auxiliary tool for efficiency, or can it also function as a true collaborator in the act of creation? photo (c) Shawn Punch This question echoes across the broader landscape of contemporary fashion. Artificial intelligence has proven invaluable in forecasting trends and optimizing supply chains, but its relationship with creativity remains fraught. AI’s capacity to parse vast data sets and generate predictive models has reshaped how designers anticipate market movements, but can it replicate the human instinct for materiality, improvisation, and aesthetic judgment? COPE NYC’s engagement with AI highlights a nuanced approach—one that neither wholly embraces nor rejects the technology but rather investigates its potential as a means of expanding the designer’s toolkit. Beyond designing the interior of the runway space, COPE NYC further deepened its community engagement by inviting students from Bedford- Stuyvesant New Beginnings High School to design a fashion line for the show and model their creations. Led by their teacher, Ms. Corbin, these students not only explored the intersection of design and self-expression but also built a body of work to diversify their resumes and portfolios. “I want you to know how impactful the experience of our children participating in Fashion Week Brooklyn with COPE NYC has been on our students and their families,” Ms. Corbin reflected. “Several parents [have] expressed how proud they were of their children for being part of such a wonderful event.” “She went on to share that this visibility has inspired students to take their engagement further; those who participated in COPE NYC’s multi-faceted approach to fashion will be joining the school’s Fashion Enrichment Program and are now planning to start a fashion club.” By integrating students, emerging professionals, and seasoned designers within a single framework, COPE NYC is not merely responding to industry shifts—it is also actively shaping them. It is within these experimental spaces, where sustainability meets technology and art meets function, that new paradigms of design begin to take form. Recognizing that fashion education can sometimes be disconnected from real-world practice, COPE NYC strives to present a dynamic alternative, one where learning, making, and innovating seamlessly intersect. The runway, in this case, goes beyond a stage for presentation; it becomes a site of inquiry, pushing forward the conversation on how we create, consume, and reimagine the materials that define our world.

By Daina Higgins, May 30th, 2025 HOW WE CONSUME IMAGERY HAS BEEN RADICALLY TRANSFORMED BY DIGITAL MEDIA OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, AND IT IS ABOUT TO CHANGE EVEN FURTHER WITH THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the beleaguered art industry regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on picture-making. Its effect on the applied arts is already apparent, with AI generated photographs, special effects, and graphics. These are all for the most part presented and viewed on a backlit screen. Even paintings, which are flat but physical objects with surface characteristics, are mostly viewed as photographs on a screen. True viewing of paintings happens under reflected light. The paint contains ground pigments, made of earth or synthetic materials, that have inherent qualities that change under UV light. Suspended in mediums such as acrylic polymers, linseed oils, petroleum distillates, alkyds, or varnishes derived from pine resin, one sees light refracted through paint layers in varying degrees of opacity and transparency, giving the painting different moods in different lighting conditions. “A neurological study commissioned by the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, the Netherlands, found that viewing artworks in person elicited an emotional response 10 times stronger than viewing those same works in reproduction.[1]” A painting made in 2025 has as much direct lineage to a painting made from ground earth and animal fat in a Paleolithic cave, than it does to an AI-generated image. For this reason, I am not fearful of AI “taking my job”, unless it is a robot doing the painting, and we all know how good those paintings are. In fact, I believe that AI has the ability to once more liberate painting the way the invention of photography did. The questions is, how will we bring painting to audiences who are home-bound and screen dependent? Perhaps that is a socio-political issue that needs to be resolved in order for painting to survive. And in order for it to survive, we need to advocate for the benefits of material richness in the everyday lives of people. Creating and sharing art is becoming a political act. I am all for deprofessionalizing art, and bringing art back to accessible spaces- the café, the street, the classroom. Only in this way, will art survive our techno-feudal age. You can see Daina Higgins’ paintings in Belonging: The Long Island City Studio Collective. An exhibition featuring the work of the fourteen painters who form the New York collective. The exhibition will be on view at Contemporary Art Matters, 243 N 5th Street, Columbus, OH location, April 10- May 30th, 2025. Visit dainahiggins.com for more information. @dainahiggins_studio

by Didem Ozdemir

Laurie Cumbo, the New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, represented Brooklyn at the Vogue Met Gala celebrating “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”, accompanied by husband Bobby Digi Olisa. We will give you a glimpse of the great chemistry Laurie shared with the gown.

The holographic fashion show was established by Future Frontrow’s Isabella Udo and Antonio Talarico. Mutani, Stephy Fung, Suza Vos and Harriet Blend’s designs were part of the interactive holographic fashion show at Clare Tattersall’s Digital Fashion Week NYC, presents the future of fashion. The design followed the movement of the dancer, tracked by an AI system. The digital avatars were dressed in cutting-edge designs, showcasing the intersection of technology and fashion. This innovative approach to showcasing fashion captivated the audience and highlighted the potential for future collaborations between fashion and technology. The show was in parallel with a phygital (“physical” and “digital” )fashion show, featuring designers: Loreine Studio, Right Direction, Next Berries and House of Bartholomew. During the show, the giant digital avatars simulate the fluid movements of models via real time motion capture on the runway. The event was hosted at the FIT DTech lab.

April 28th, 2025 By (the)MAGAZINE EVENT: DENIM DAY NYC MARCH / APRIL30TH / 9am-1pm/ BROOKLYN BOROUGH HALL Footage courtesy of (the)MAGAZINE T he Denim Day NYC March over the Brooklyn Bridge is a powerful annual event held on the last Wednesday of April as part of Sexual Violence Awareness Month. Denim Day originated in 1999 when an Italian court overturned a rape conviction, citing the victim's tight jeans as a reason for the acquittal, not as a form of consent. Survivors, advocates, city officials, and community members march against sexual violence organized by the DDNYC Coalition and the NYC Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV). The BK Style Foundation hosts a denim-themed fashion show at Brooklyn Borough Hall, contributing to raising awareness and challenging misconceptions about consent, adding an artistic touch. Fashion advocacy and awareness are highlighted in this showcase of models and designers wearing creative denim. The fashion show acts as a prelude to the march, actively challenging the misconception that clothing implies consent by emphasizing the importance of understanding consent and debunking harmful myths. Reaching the 25-year milestone of Denim Day NYC is more than a celebration—it's a powerful reminder of the enduring fight against sexual violence and the collective strength of survivors, advocates, and allies. For a quarter-century, Denim Day has served as a global call to challenge harmful myths about consent, dismantle victim-blaming, and foster a culture of accountability and support. Roxanne Guiney interviewed NYC Mayor's Office to ENDGBV Acting Deputy Commissioner of Community Initiatives and External Affairs Tesa Arozqueta and Safe Horizon Policy Director Jimmy Meagher's for the anniversary in our last print publication. The annual march and the one-off courtroom fashion show celebrated the milestone by reaffirming the commitment to supporting survivors, dispelling sexual assault myths, and challenging misconceptions about consent. The campaign's message is clear: rape is never justified. A 2019 study published in Violence Against Women  found that belief in rape myths (like "they were asking for it") correlates with reduced support for victims and increased tolerance of perpetrators. On the other hand, public awareness campaigns that directly challenge those myths—such as Denim Day—have been shown to increase empathy toward survivors and promote a culture of consent and accountability. Rape is not caused by clothing, behavior, or misunderstanding—it's caused by a choice to disregard consent. When we reject all justifications for sexual violence, we take a critical step toward preventing it and creating a safer, more just society for everyone." The opening ceremony at Brooklyn Borough Hall showcases the presence of city leaders, school groups, and survivors, highlighting a diverse representation of individuals committed to addressing sexual violence. The closing ceremony at Foley Square in Manhattan features powerful speeches from activists and survivors, emphasizing the importance of breaking the silence, supporting victims, and advocating for justice and change. Together, they unite in solidarity to demand justice and change. @denimdaynyc @bkstylefoundation

DESIGNER HIGHLIGHTS

CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES PROMOTING EQUALITY NEW YORK CITY (COPE NYC) IS A NON-PROFIT CULTURAL INSTITUTION. I AM THE FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF THIS ARTS ORGANIZATION, WHOSE MISSION IS TO BRIDGE COMMUNITIES THROUGH SAFE, CREATIVE ENDEAVORS. WE’RE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR ROTATING EXHIBITIONS AT OUR FLAGSHIP LOCATION AT 630 FLUSHING AVENUE IN BROOKLYN, NY.