AI generative art.

2022.

For thousands of years, humans have been imagining animal-human hybrids that have supernatural qualities or exotic appeal. Museum of Curious Beings is a two-part archive and provocation where AI and technology meet the ancient sensory picture-world. Between generative images of non-existent beings, human-animal intermediaries, human-robot intermediaries, and animal intermediaries, Collection 1 explores the human-animal-cyborg becoming as an enaction of the supernatural from commonplace. The Museum uses StyleGAN trained on animals, animalistic deities, human bodies, cyborgs, and robots, to generate a latent space of their intermediaries. Collection 2 explores the [im]possibilities of imaginary creatures as chimeras from real animal photos. Instead of imagination, the Museum uses StyleGAN in RunwayML to generate these mythical creatures, with a framework of reference in the Cabinet of Curiosities frenzy in which many fabricated supernatural specimens catered toward a taste of exoticism in the pretense of nature discoveries.

Developed in GSD’s Neural Bodies.

Instructor: Andrew Witt.