This and the Latent Landscapes series are related in their style of creation and production, where the underlying works for both are generated by an Artificial Intelligence (A.I) that i train. For this, i curate a large collection of landscape and flower paintings. While i use the entirety of the landscapes, for the flower paintings, i randomly zoom into details and crop out portions from them to create the dataset of images for my A.I to train on. i am interested in what emerges from the larger compositions of the landscapes, and the zoomed in, macro details of the flower paintings, from the same AI training process. i use an algorithm called Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) which is based on deep neural networks (designed to loosely mimic the human brain) and chain multiple kinds of neural networks together to get the final output. This includes starting from a generative network which creates an initial image, albeit of very low resolution, which is passed through subsequent neural networks which i trained as image enhancers to ultimately get to the final output.
Through the machine creation process, i bring out a new aesthetic of the machine, in both overall composition and detail. The details have collections of cumulated pixel-like spots and uncanny edges which emerge through the underlying neural network process used in the creation. i preserve these elements to highlight the process.
Nowhere in the process is the machine told any explicit rules about composition or color, leaving it to learn all this from the dataset of paintings it sees. It then creates new works pixel-by-pixel, very unlike a human artist who creates paintings stroke-by-stroke. To enhance this contrast of how an artwork is created through these very different processes, i first takes archival prints of the machine’s output. i then go onto to bring a human artist into the process, directing the human artist to paint over all the areas of the print he defines as non-machinic, mimicking the print underneath, while leaving the unusual, uncanny machinic details out, untouched by the human hand to remain as print. The two worlds of pixel-by-pixel generation and stroke-by-stroke painting interplay within the same work, inviting the audience to reflect on such unifications in our broader emerging techno-cultural context.
Emergent Patterns 1. Gouache and water color on Archival Print on Paper. 36×36 inch. 2019.
Emergent Patterns 2. Gouache and water color on Archival Print on Paper. 36×36 inch. 2019.
Emergent Patterns 3. Gouache and water color on Archival Print on Paper. 36×36 inch. 2019.
Mockup of Emergent Patterns 2 in an Interior Space.
Mockup of Emergent Patterns 1 in an Interior Space.