Part of the Learning to See series:
Created during my PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, funded by the EPSRC.
2017. HD Video. Duration: 4:27. Technique: Custom software, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Generative Adversarial Networks.
The artificial neural networks are trained on images scraped from wikimedia; specifically, the Google Art Project – a brief, incomplete survey of human (mostly western) Art, as collected by Google, Keeper of our collective consciousness. Google sees everything we see, knows everything we know, feels everything we feel. Living up in The Cloud, of all places, it watches over us, listening to our thoughts and dreams in ones and zeros. A digital god for a digital culture.
Tens of thousands of images scraped from the Google Art Project, containing scans from art collections and museums from all over the world. These include paintings, illustrations, sketches and photographs covering landscapes, portraits, religious imagery, pastoral scenes, maritime scenes, scientific illustrations, prehistoric cave paintings, abstract images, cubist, realist paintings and many more – an extensive (yet vastly incomplete) archive of human imagination, feelings, desires and dreams; as cataloged by the Keeper of our collective consciousness, Google.
We have a very intimate connection with the cloud. We confide in it. We confess to it. We appeal to it. We share secrets with it, secrets that we wouldn’t share with our family or closest friends. And Google is the Keeper of our collective consciousness. It sees everything we see, knows everything we know, feels everything we feel. Living up in The Cloud, of all places, it watches over us, listening to our thoughts and dreams in ones and zeros. And now, just as the Church – the previous bastion of our Spiritual Overseer – used to be the purveyor of Art & Culture; now Google – bastion of our new Digital Overseer – is moving into that role too.