During the 2021 summer, I got an interesting opportunity to help Sam Price, a MFA students from Cornell, conduct his art project "monkeylogic". This project utilized similar computational methods as Evolution experiments and explore the interaction of image interpretation and art creation. As the programmer in this collaboration of Art and Science, I'm really happy to see the final product being in exhibition!
Here is what we did: Sam painted an original abstract painting on canvas and digitalized it as an image. Then, I inverted the digital version into the latent space of BigGAN patch by patch. For example the right most patch is part of his painting, and the left 4 patches are the ones generated by BigGAN, trying to mimic the texture and composition of that patch of painting.
Next, he invited viewers to interact with my adapted Evolution system to guide the change of image starting from these inverted images. From a ring of 8 varying samples, viewers would linger their mouse on the images they feel most appropriately "interpret" the original painting. None of these "interpretation" will be the same as the original one, and they will contain the prior of the BigGAN generator and guided by the interpretation of the viewer. The algorithm will try to learn from the interaction with the subject and iteratively propose images that suits the viewer's interpretation more and more. These images would keep evolving through the interaction, and finally become the joint creation of the original artist, the BigGAN generator and the viewer.
Each viewer would lead to a different version of the patch guided by their own feelings, so Sam collected these "reinterpreted" patched from tens of viewers. He went on to montage these re-created images and make sculptures out of them like these. Check out his portfolio website!
This modern demonstration of viewing as recreation of art is deeply intriguing to me!
For the behind the scene story, check out his podcast and his documentary!
BTW: If you want to own these surreal art work, please visit his NFT store!
