In yesterday's post we looked at visualisations of data as art via an installation at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice.
While there are people who may still be skeptical about data being showcased in an art event, it is impossible to deny that technology is opening new paths in different creative disciplines, art included, as proved also by another installation at the Venice Biennale.
Artist Ian Cheng creates for example living environments using techniques borrowed from computer programming.
These environments feature characters and elements that have the ability to constantly mutate and transform. Cheng's environments could therefore be considered as living virtual ecosystems that start with basic properties but self-evolve little by little without the artist controlling them or without ending, a modus operandi that is generates confusion and anxiety in the viewers.
In the Central Pavilion at the Giardini there is one of these environments, "BOB (Bag of Beliefs)". The latter is a form of Artificial Intelligence, a sentient being with a personality, values and a red worm-like body in constant growth, appearing on a giant screen.
BOB develops like a neural network, moving in infinite cycles of existence and visitors can interact with or influence it via an iOS app. BOB's behavioural patterns therefore continuously transform and its reactions quickly mutate, going from the enraged to the playful. The AI will eventually understand how to balance desires, pleasures and pains with time and experience, trial and error.
Cheng's also added in the Arsenale the story of BOB in panels presented in a sort of comic book style (that will make graphic novel connoisseurs think about Jeff Smith's Bone for the fantasy environments in which BOB is placed; if you like the story you can buy Cheng's fanzine about BOB in the exhibition shop).
The panels offer visitors a fantasy visions of a series of AI characters and gives an idea about what it is like to hang out with BOB.
Cheng's "BOB" proves that AI can be creative, but the dilemma about the results of this creative process remains open (can we indeed consider this form of art as filled with the emotions we may feel while watching a painting by a human artist?).
Last year the first painting by an Artificial Intelligence - Portrait of Edmond Belamy - created by Paris-based art collective Obvious using an algorithm and a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, was sold at Christies for $430,000, sparking the debate about AI and art.
Cheng's "BOB" invites visitors to question again what's art and what's not, but the graphic novel-like panels offering the background story to BOB, prove that AI can try and mimick art or even break free from its chain, but you will still need a human artist to provide it with a context in which it can exists.
Comments