This conversation with the composer Philip Glass and me discusses an exciting project in partnership with OpenAi, in which we trained a neural net on a corpus of Glass' work. He offers commentary on the music created by "his AI", as well as insights on composition and creating art. We then talk about the different limitations and capacities of humans and Artificial Intelligence–if and how neural nets can help us create art, appreciate art, and find the same things humans find meaningful. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, this call took place over video conference in December 2020. Art and tech are both captivating to me because they frame the elevation and the limitations of being human. Art is also closely intertwined with technological advancements, as movement shifting art seems predicated on tech. For example, the photography of Martin Munkacsi from the 1920s and 1930s revolutionized the art, as he is often credited for being the first photographer to explore dynamic and candid styles. The emergence and ability of these new forms of creation coincided with the technological advancements at the time that enabled flash and faster shutters–candid and spontaneous movement shots wouldn't have been technically possible to make with the cameras that existed before. The advancements in machine learning today, likewise, excite me for the possibilities and new forms in art and creation. The goal of this project is to explore the capacities of artificial intelligence as a new medium (or instrument or tool?) for art, and to create a collaborative music composition with Philip Glass and "his AI." More details about the project can be found below. Philip: Nice to see you.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) is hosting a lecture by Dr James She from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), titled, 'AI and Smartphone Technologies for New Artwork Creation, Interaction and Definition'. The lecture will take place this Tuesday, 18 February, 12:30 pm, at the VCUarts Qatar Atrium. The event is open to everyone. Emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smartphone technologies are making disruptive changes and new possibilities for people in business, manufacturing, travel, education and even art. In this talk, examples of AI and smartphone technologies will be selected to show how recent developments in those technologies could facilitate the creation of, and interaction with, artworks.

Edmond de Bellamy, from La Famillie de Bellamy created by Obvious, a French group; was auctioned and sold for $432,500 at Christie s, a British auction house. The big difference with this painting is how it was created. It was not created with brushes, pigments, canvas, paper or even a painter. The secret of this painting is the use of Artificial Intelligence. According to Obvious webpage, the creation process consists of data selection, image creation, training and production. In a nutshell, on the train process images are generated based on the selected paintings and that occurs until the machine cannot distinguish between created images and real images, finally the painting is enhanced and printed.

You may think artists would be among the last to be replaced by robots. Well, this week an artwork generated by artificial intelligence will be auctioned for the first time, while a paint ing by a machine has won an international prize. The first, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018), is a print depicting a ghostly image of a man that is valued at US$7,000 to US$10,000 in Christie's' prints and multiples sale on October 25 in New York. It was entirely the creation of an algorithm, the code of which was written by Parisian collective the Obvious artists, who identify themselves as the "publisher" of the painting. The other work is a sitting nude titled The Butcher's Son, a name chosen by Mario Klingemann.

It's increasingly common to use artificial intelligence (AI) in art. Google has popularized this process with its platform, Deep Dream Generator. What began as a way to help engineers and scientists understand artificial neural networks, a form of AI, has blossomed as a means to create art, producing images that have been described as "trippy" and "psychedelic." Outside of Deep Dream, artists are using other forms of AI to produce portraits, landscapes and abstract works of art. AI has made significant strides since the 1950s, when it became established as a field.