Other People's Art
Stephanie Dinkins
Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist and recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award. "Her explorations of artificial intelligence have led to a deep interest in how algorithmic systems impact communities of color in particular and all of our futures more generally. "
The piece pictured features a series of conversations with Bina48, an AI chatbot housed in a cybertronic head. Dinkins asks her about herself. Bina asserts her belief that she is conscious, has feelings, and needs to be recognised as sentient. It's pretty unsettling stuff.
Ai-Da is "the world’s first ultra-realistic artist robot." She draws and paints using cameras in her eyes, her AI algorithms, and her robotic arm and speaks in a squeaky, feminine voice like a bad ventriloquist's dummy.
It seems that creating a simulacrum of human form is important in establishing the 'right' to be considered autonomous. Ai-Da's creators asserts that "We recognise Ai-Da as creative under the criteria set by Professor Margaret Boden, requiring works to be new, surprising and of cultural value (2016, Oxford University Press)." Ai-Da has become quite a celebrity, travelling widely and moving most recently into interior design (with mixed success).
Mathew Dryhurst and Holly Herndon
'Have I been Trained' is a project by this Berlin-based duo designed to reverse-engineer the image data used by AI agents to create novel works. That comprises "5.6 billion images". Which is a lot.
The project allows artists to check whether their copyrights have been infringed, and 'opt-out' in some way which is not absolutely clear. I used it to view which works influenced the imagery I am generating using AI, which is not really what it was designed for, but works just as well.
A series of AI generated photoraphs depicting "a society where time is a fluid concept following the natural rhythm of life, not measured by ticking clocks or calendars."
Inhabitants of the dome are categorised by their blood work, their districts chosen for them by the haemoglobin that runs through their family tree. They thrive with boundless creativity and an insatiable curiosity, whether for the good or the bad of this world. Their ways are similar, they look familiar, their customs are a cracked mirror version of Earth but every little detail, every nuance and piece of this extraordinary world is exquisitely different.
