20 Birds
In her debut solo exhibition "Brief Histories of Simulated Lifeforms" at Vellum LA gallery in 2022, a space dedicated to new media and digital art, Sofia Crespo showcased nature-inspired artworks created using Artificial Intelligence. Some of the pieces were also available for purchase as NFTs through SuperRare, a selective platform that sells more curated and gallery-related art than other popular NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible.
The pieces, displayed on LED screens, filled the space with vibrant, neural network-generated life forms. This deep machine learning technique, initially proposed in the 1950s and experiencing a resurgence in the 1980s, has seen fluctuating popularity over the years, with its last boom in the past years with work from artists like Rafik Anadol, who has been filling renowned spaces with his AI art.
One piece, 20 Birds, presents avian figures re-imagined by AI, challenging viewers' perception as they attempt to identify familiar species in these novel manifestations of life. The intricate textures employed by AI further deceive the eye, inviting observers to engage with the piece on a deeper level. As viewers gaze upon the artwork, its form continuously evolves, akin to a puzzle unraveling before their eyes. The composition includes ducks formed by multiple overlapping what, at first glance, appear to be duck images, rendered in a subdued color scheme composed by green, maroon, and beige colors, distinct from the exhibition's other works.
Crespo's method involves compiling datasets from images of the natural world, resulting in pieces reminiscent of illustrations found in historical biology textbooks. This intentional aesthetic bridges the gap between artificially created and organically observed life, sparking a dialogue on the capabilities of artificial life in interpreting and recreating organic forms. As the artist mentions, she likes to think about them as how in the pre-camera time, people would study and create these images based on what the scientist or biologist would interpret and describe, similar to her approach of describing to the AI what she "observes" and the machine reinterprets this based on what it knows, creating mesmerizing and sometimes scary pieces of artificial life. These lifelike manifestations sometimes can be interpreted as future versions of themselves or how they might evolve. Ultimately Sofia’s work talks about the profound and intimate relationship between organic and artificial life.
Sources
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