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ARS ELECTRONICA ARCHIVE – AI LAB

The European ARTificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab) is a follow-up project to the European Digital Art and Science Network, a creative collaboration between scientific institutions, Ars Electronica and cultural partners throughout Europe that unites science and digital art. The European ARTificial Intelligence Lab follows on from this and addresses visions, expectations and fears that we associate with artificial intelligence. The consortium consists of 13 cultural institutions from Europe with Ars Electronica as coordinator. This online archive provides an overview of all activities carried out during the project's lifetime from 2018 to 2021. It also provides information about the network itself, the residency artists and juries, and the project partners involved. The AI Lab is co-funded by the EU program "Creative Europe (2014-2020)" and by the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

European ARTificial Intelligence Lab Exhibition by Ars Electronica 2019

European ARTificial Intelligence Lab Exhibition by Ars Electronica

The European ARTificial Intelligence Lab will be bringing AI related scientific and technological topics to general citizens and art audiences in order to contribute to a critical and reflective society. The project will be focusing on aspects beyond the technological and economic horizon to scrutinize cultural, psychological, philosophical and spiritual aspects.

Presented works:
Ai-Da Robot Artist – Oxfordians (UK, INT), Aidan Meller (UK), Lucy Seal (UK)
Anatomy of an AI System – Vladan Joler (RS), Kate Crawford (AU)
Distributed Robotic Assembly for Timber Structures – Samuel Leder (US), Ramon Weber (CH)
Doing Nothing with AI – Emanuel Gollob (AT)
Facebook Algorithmic Factory – Vladan Joler (RS)
Feminist Data Set – Caroline Sinders (US)
Gender Shades – Joy Buolamwini (US), Timnit Gebru (ETH)
Ghosthouse – h.o (INT)
In Posse – Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
Learning to See: Gloomy Sunday - Memo Akten (TR)
MegaPixels – Adam Harvey (US), Jules LaPlace (US)
NORAA – Machinic Doodles – Jessica In (UK/AU)
SEER: Simulative Emotional Expression Robot – Takayuki Todo (JP)
SHE BON – Sarah Petkus (US)
The Seeker – Nye Thompson (UK)
UngenauBot – Ilmar Hurkxkens (NL), Fabian Bircher (CH)
What a Ghost Dreams Of – h.o (INT)
Women Reclaiming AI – Birgitte Aga (UK), Coral Manton (UK)
• Info: European ARTificial Intelligence Lab
POSTCITY, Linz, AT
05.09.2019 – 08.09.2019
Year of creation
2019

Urls
Exhibition Website: https://ars.electronica.art/outofthebox/en/ailab/
AI Lab Publikation (with Descriptions of all the exhibited projects and Bios of all the artists): https://archive.aec.at/ailab/showmode/92/

Start:
Sep 05, 2019
End:
Sep 08, 2019

Info:
• Internal Project: AI Lab Online Archiv

European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, Ars Electronica
Ai-Da Robot Artist / Oxfordians (UK, INT), Aidan Meller (UK), Lucy Seal (UK)
Ai-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic AI robot artist. She can draw, and is a performance artist. As a machine, with AI capabilities, her artist persona is the artwork, along with her drawings, performance art and collaborative paintings and sculptures.

Credit: tom mesic
Ai-Da Robot Artist / Aidan Meller (UK)
As the world’s first ultra-realistic AI artist robot, Ai-Da is uniquely placed to help us think a little more deeply about art, creativity, and how our varied futures might look. As the world struggles to morph around a destabilizing environment and a rapidly changing technological landscape, the notion of identity when we collaborate so closely with machines and AI becomes increasingly urgent. As ‘The Other’, Ai-Da reflects ourselves back to us through her drawing, performance art and collaborative paintings and sculptures that involve human, AI and digital inputs. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s cautionary writings remain relevant – ethical discussions are needed to direct the development of new technologies in a direction that protects rather than exploits the vulnerable sectors of our world, including animals and the environment.

Credit: Nicky Johnston
Anatomy of an AI System / Vladan Joler (RS), Kate Crawford (AU)
In the 21st century, we are seeing a new kind of mining for raw materials that drills deep into the biosphere. This enables AI technologies that are having a profound effect on the cognitive and affective layers of human nature. The resources for producing systems such as Amazon Echo, a speech controlled, Internet-based personal assistant, go beyond the technical aspects of data modelling, hardware, servers, and networks and extend much further into the realms of work, capital, and nature. The true costs – social, ecological, economic, and political – remain mostly hidden. Anatomy of an AI uses the example of Amazon Echo to show the countless components and factors behind the production of artificial intelligence systems. But this process is so complex that its full extent can hardly be comprehended.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
Distributed Robotic Assembly for Timber Structures by Samuel Leder (US) and Ramon Weber (CH)
Distributed Robotic Assembly for Timber Structures–a robot construction group for structures made of wood–is a multidisciplinary research project which deals with the autonomous machine collectives that create building structures. At the center of the multiple robot insulation system is a robotic node, a wireless, intelligent machine that interacts with other machines of its kind.
The choreographic behavior of swarms of robots gives rise to complex, multifaceted wooden structures. In addition, the special conditions that could lead to a disruption in the construction of an actual building structure are investigated in an ongoing way in the research project. The purpose of the projectis to contribute to a future development in construction in which robots can work efficiently round the clock.

https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/teaching/master-theses/itech-m-sc-2018-distributed-roboticassembly-system-for-in-situ-timber-construction

ICD Institute for Computational Design and Construction
Doing Nothing with AI / Emanuel Gollob (AT)
In times of constant busyness, technological overload and the demand for permanent receptivity to information, doing nothing is often seen as provocative and a waste of time. However, enjoying a moment of inaction and introspection while letting our minds wander and daydream may be more productive than staying constantly busy.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
Facebook Algorithmic Factory / Vladan Joler (RS)
Facebook Algorithmic Factory sheds light on the invisible processes that take place inside the world’s largest social network. Inside this black box, non-transparent algorithms are deciding what kind of content will become a part of our reality, what will be censored or deleted, which ideas will spread and what news gain most visibility. They are also defining new forms of labor and exploitation. Users are no longer clients. We only provide data, which serves as raw material for the production of digital profiles – a key commodity on internet stock markets.
Facebook Algorithmic Factory generates an enormous amount of wealth and power by creating a deep economic gap between those who own and control the means of production and their users, who often live below the poverty line. The layers of algorithmic data processing may conceal new forms of human rights violation, novel mechanisms for exploitation and manipulation that we no longer control. Our first step in fighting them back is to make them visible.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
Facebook Algorithmic Factory / Vladan Joler (RS)
Facebook Algorithmic Factory sheds light on the invisible processes that take place inside the world’s largest social network. Inside this black box, non-transparent algorithms are deciding what kind of content will become a part of our reality, what will be censored or deleted, which ideas will spread and what news will gain most visibility. They are also defining new forms of labour and exploitation.

Credit: Design Society
Feminist Data Set / Caroline Sinders (US)
Feminist Data Set is an ongoing multi-year art project that combines lectures, workshops, and calls to action to collect feminist data to create a series of interventions for machine learning. What is feminist data? Feminist data can be artworks, essays, interviews, and books that are from, about, or explore feminism and a feminist perspective. The creation of this feminist data set will act as a means to combat bias and introduce the possibility of data collection as a feminist practice, aiming to produce a slice of data to intervene in larger civic and private networks.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
Feminist Data Set / Caroline Sinders (US)
Feminist Data Set acts as a means to combat bias and introduce the possibility of data collection as a feminist practice, aiming to produce a slice of data to intervene in larger civic and private networks. Exploring its potential to disrupt larger systems by generating new forms of agency, her work asks: can data collection itself function as an artwork?

Credit: Rachel Steinberg
Gender Shades / Joy Buolamwini (US)
Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru investigated the bias of AI facial recognition programs. The study reveals that popular applications that are already part of the programming display obvious discrimination on the basis of gender or skin color. One reason for the unfair results can be found in erroneous or incomplete data sets on which the program is being trained. In things like medical applications, this can be a problem: simple convolutional neural nets are already as capable of detecting melanoma (malignant skin changes) as experts are.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
Ghosthouse / h.o (INT)
A deep dive into the information “swamp” is a kind of out-of-body experience. Smartphones, tablets, computer screens, and televisions become gateways for our spirits to embark on a journey. These spirits of our consciousness gather in the installation Ghosthouse. After an app called GhostApp is installed on a smartphone, the phone’s use will be reflected in the art installation. The installation is made up of robots with eyes. When a user begins to interact with their smartphone, one of the robot eyes opens and begins looking around the room. When the interaction is over, the eye closes again. Our bodies are observed from far away, while our spirit, which is immersed in the smartphone, controls the process. How do we accept this gap between body and spirit?

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
In Posse / Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
In Posse is a work in progress. Artist Charlotte Jarvis is collaborating with Prof Susana Chuva de Sousal Lopes in Leiden, Biotehna / Kersnikova Institute in Ljubljana and MU Gallery Eindhoven to make the world’s first “female” semen.

Credit: vog.photo
In Posse by Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
Throughout history, semen has been revered as a magical substance–a totem of literal and symbolic potency. In Posse aims to rewrite this cultural narrative; to use art and science to disrupt the patriarchy by making semen from “female” cells. The project is being developed in three parts–firstly, Jarvis is on a journey to grow spermatozoa (sperm cells) from her body in collaboration with Prof. Susana Chuva de Sousal Lopes. At the same time, she has developed a female form of seminal plasma (the fluid part of semen) using material donated by multiple women, trans and gender non−binary people. Finally, Jarvis is using the “female” semen in a series of re−enactments of the ancient Greek women−only festival of Thesmophoria.

Collaborator: Prof Susana Chuva de Sousal Lopes at the Leiden University Medical Centre
This project is supported by: MU Gallery Eindhoven and Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova Institute; Video and Film

support: Eleni Papazoglou and Miha Godec
Learning to See: Gloomy Sunday / Memo Akten (TR)
Learning to See is an ongoing series of works that use the latest machine learning algorithms to reflect on how we understand the world. What people see is a reconstruction based on our expectations and previously held beliefs. Learning to See is an artificial neural network loosely inspired by the human visual cortex. It looks through cameras and also tries to understand what it sees. Of course it can only see what it already knows — the same as us. This work is part of a broader line of research about the difficulty of seeing the world through the eyes of others. Learning to See: Gloomy Sunday is a video and an interactive installation where the recordings taken by a live camera aimed at a table covered with objects are analyzed by a series of neural networks trained on different data sets (ocean, fi re, clouds, and flowers).

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
MegaPixels / Adam Harvey (US), Jules LaPlace (US)
MegaPixels is an independent art and research project that investigates the ethics, origins, and individual privacy implications of face recognition image datasets and their role in the expansion of biometric surveillance technologies. The project aims to provide a critical perspective on machine learning image datasets, one that might otherwise be overlooked by academic and industry-funded artifi cial intelligence think tanks. Each dataset presented on this site undergoes a thorough review of its images, intent, and funding sources.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
NORAA – Machinic Doodles / Jessica In (UK/AU)
How do we recognize objects when we draw them with lines and strokes? What rules do we use to draw in a particular order from one point to another? And can a machine be taught to learn to draw on its own, without being given explicit instructions? What insights does this provide into the human process of drawing? Machinic Doodles is an interactive game installation that examines the collaboration between a human and a robot named NORAA, an artificial intelligence that is learning to draw. It studies how humans express ideas through strokes in a drawing, and how a machine can learn to draw using an artifi cial neural network.

Credit: vog.photo
SEER: Simulative Emotional Expression Robot / Takayuki Todo (JP)
SEER is a compact humanoid robot developed through intensive research into the gaze and facial expressions of human beings. The robot is able to focus its line of vision on a certain point without being thrown off by the motion of its neck. Because of this, the robot seems to have its own intentions to follow people and its surroundings, and to pay attention to them. A camera sensor helps it to observe with an interactive gaze. The robot’s expression can also be enriched by depicting its eyebrow curve with soft, elastic wire so that it gives the impression of emotions.

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
SEER: Simulative Emotional Expression Robot / Takayuki Todo (JP)
SEER is a compact humanoid robot developed through intensive research into the gaze and facial expressions of human beings. The robot is able to focus its line of vision on a certain point without being thrown off by the motion of its neck. Because of this, the robot seems to have its own intentions to follow people and its surroundings, and to pay attention to them. A camera sensor helps it to observe with an interactive gaze. The robot’s expression can also be enriched by depicting its eyebrow curve with soft, elastic wire so that it gives the impression of emotions.

Credit: Magdalena Sick-Leitner
SHE BON / Sarah Petkus (US)
The SHE BON project is a collection of body augments which sense aspects of the wearer’s physical state in order to communicate their level of arousal. Collectively, the systems that have been developed for this project make up a human-computer interface capable of orchestrating sensor input from the body in order to influence mechanical and electronic forms of performative output which express subtle aspects of the wearer’s physical state in a manner that characterizes their sexual identity.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
SHE BON / Sarah Petkus (US)
The SHE BON project is a collection of body augments which sense aspects of the wearer’s physical state in order to communicate sexual arousal. Collectively, the systems that have been developed for this project make up a highly personalize 'suite of amour' capable of orchestrating sensor input from the body in order to display mechanical and electronic forms of performative output which express subtle aspects of the wearer’s physical state in a manner that characterizes their sexual identity.

Credit: Mark Koch
The Seeker / Nye Thompson (UK)
The Seeker is a proto-AI that travels the world virtually looking through compromised surveillance camera eyes and describing its visions. Named for Ptah-Seker, the artist/technologist god of Ancient Egypt, who created the world by speaking the words to describe it, this project looks at how the act of describing the world might establish a whole new worldview for machines and humans alike.

Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum
UngenauBot / Ilmar Hurkxkens (NL) & Fabian Bircher (CH)
Dinner for None
A robot must never stop. A robot must follow its own will. A robot does not have to be successful. The work UngenauBot combines highly developed robot technology with an everyday rubber glove performing banal activities. By deliberately exploiting empirical errors in robotic systems and artificial
intelligence, this work demonstrates the limits of technology when things don’t go according to plan. UngenauBot is suspended from three points enabling free movement in space. For interaction, it has access to various vision sensors, a speaker and a hand with a hygienic yellow rubber glove. The
humanoid hand of the otherwise very technoid robot serves to establish an affective response in the viewer. In this installation, the UngenauBot will attempt to set a table with silverware. The insufficiency in machine vision and robotic control systems generate unpredictable situations which render it a clumsy and spontaneous artifact. UngenauBot will recognize various tasks at hand, announce them over the integrated speaker and execute them. Various moments of inaccuracy will become apparent with which the audience can empathize. The questionable services of the UngenauBot expose the robotic system as equally ignorant and imperfect in the relation between human and robot.


Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
UngenauBot / Ilmar Hurkxkens (NL) & Fabian Bircher (CH)
A robot must never stop. A robot must follow its own will. A robot does not have to be successful. The work UngenauBot combines highly developed robot technology with an everyday rubber glove performing banal activities. By deliberately exploiting empirical errors in robotic systems and artificial intelligence, this work demonstrates the limits of technology when things don’t go according to plan. Fabian Bircher and Ilmar Hurkxkens do not focus on the development of intelligent and precise robot technology, instead, they are interested in the unpredictability and inaccuracy of physical systems. The combination of technology with subversive human interaction, that manifests itself in the development of robots that perform simple and nonsensical work, is intended to question people’s relation to robot technology, what it can do and whom they serve.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald
What a Ghost Dreams Of / h.o (INT)
What is a “ghost”? Generally it is understood as an inner “soul” and a mysterious outward appearance. What a Ghost Dreams Of grapples with a new “ghost” of our time: digital surveillance in our society. Here in the Main Gallery, visitors are observed by a large “eye” when they come in. Everyone who passes by is fed by computer vision directly into a “ghost” that creates new digital faces of people who do not exist in the real world. What do we humans project into the digital counterpart we are creating with AI? It is getting to know our world without prior knowledge and generating data that never existed. What are the effects of using AI to produce works of art? Who holds the copyright? And what is AI, the “ghost,” dreaming about, and what does that mean for us as human beings?

Credit: Ars Electronica / Martin Hieslmair
Women Reclaiming AI / Birgitte Aga (UK), Coral Manton (UK)
Women Reclaiming AI (WRAI) is a collaborative AI voice assistant and activist art-work, made by a growing community of self-identifying women. Creating a platform for collective writing and editing the project co-creates an AI that challenges gender roles. WRAI is a response to the pervasive depiction of AI voice assistants gendered as women subordinate and serving. It aims to reclaim female voices in the development of future AI systems by empowering women to harness conversational AI as a medium for protest. You can speak to the evolving voice assistant at Womenreclaimingai.com and see its visual representation (GAN - generative adversarial network) created from a DIY data-set of images of the women participating and other women the collective find inspirational. This project is created by Birgitte Aga and Coral Manton in collaboration with the WRAI community of women.

Credit: Birgitte Aga, Coral Manton
Women Reclaiming AI / Birgitte Aga (UK), Coral Manton (UK)
Women Reclaiming AI (WRAI) is a collaborative AI voice assistant and activist artwork made by a growing community of self-identifying women. Creating a platform for collective writing and editing, the project co-creates an AI that challenges gender roles.

Credit: Jürgen Grünwald