Science can be a great inspiration to create innovative patterns for textiles, but the same can be said about technology. Computers and data science can indeed be employed to give a new spin to traditional narratives.
There are quite a few artists who in recent years have developed works inspired by data, conceived as a crucial form of cultural communication and a complex of diverse information. Among them there is also Orkhan Mammadov, who uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create new patterns directly inspired by traditional decorative motifs, structures and architectures.
Born in Ganja, Azerbaijan, in 1990, the artist and graphic designer first studied at the Khazar University Computer Science faculty, but then moved to Turkey to study visual communication and to Czech Republic where he focused on art and experimental media.
Currently working between New York, Prague and Baku, Mammadov created a while back an installation entitled "Circular Repetition"(it was also part of the Azerbaijan Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice). The latter employs the latest state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to process 15,000 ornamental images from the archives of several museums and libraries.
Sampling and colliding all these images together, the Artificial Intelligence creates new and unlimited combinations based on the similarities between traditional ornaments.
The AI redefines the concept of repetition: patterns taken from the Azerbaijani tradition are recreated and the AI continuously builds alternatives upon them.
There are pros and cons in this infinite generation of patterns: new graphic signs and elements are generated on a continuous basis, and the machine never seems to run out of ideas or inspirations, so this is an exciting aspect. At the same time, the alternatives generated by the machine are perfect but cold, as they are the result of an artificial synthesis that has nothing to do with the historical authenticity of ornamental patterns, or with the traditional learning processes beyond the creation of such graphic elements that is usually handed down from generation to generation.
By accessing the data of authentic ornamental images, the AI becomes an invisible master that independently processes and generates new ideas, patterns, symbols and new concepts to update a culture. In this way the non-human intelligence replaces traditional craft tools and continuously generates new cultural developments as the AI blurs the boundaries between authentic traditional patterns and fake modern ones, between physical decorative motifs traced on paper or sculpted on walls and intangible digital ones. The final effect is that of staring at a dynamically digital kaleidoscope in constant flux that keeps on mutating under your very eyes.
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