Image generated using data from Google Earth Studio with a domain key prompt as input to Nano Banana 2 grounding with Google Search and Images.
I am Don Poole, artist and designer currently investigating how large generative AI models encode and retrieve domain knowledge and what it takes to unlock that knowledge with precision, predictability and consistency. My research builds on 25 years of building simulated real-time environments at scale, with significant contributions as a world designer and builder to award-winning products from Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Wevr, and Another Axiom that millions of people experience worldwide.
Images generated with a domain key prompt as input to Nano Banana 2. Text-only prompt, no images or Google grounding used.
​My foundation is unusual for this space. I studied photography and mixed media at the University of New Mexico under renowned photographers Patrick Nagatani, Tom Barrow, and art historian Eugenia Parry Janis, thinkers who understood that artists don't follow the evolution of their medium, they drive it. That conviction has shaped how I approach every technological shift in my career, from real-time 3D to VR and AR to spatial AI. I don't see generative AI as a disruption to resist, I see it as the next phase of a conversation about how we make, see, and experience the world, one that, for me, started with photography and that continues to evolve as I do.
​​