Jan Zuiderveld
Keywords: Creativity, Xerox, Coffee
Dream Machine creates a space where people can interact with a machine that is itself creative, raising awareness of the potential of machine learning as a tool for creativity. The machine is designed to inspire playfulness and be a fun and easy way for people to create art, without needing any prior experience or knowledge.
The installation consists of a hacked 00's Xerox photocopier. In front of the Xerox machine is a drawing table with paper and markers, inviting visitors to get creative. The floor around the machine filled with drawings and outputs nudges visitors to try the machine. There is a big red button on top of the copier. When pressed, the machine will scan the input, synthesize a realistic texture on the doodle based on its content in a predefined style (the style of a certain painter, 3D render, sculpture, woodcut, etc.), and print the output. Visitors can take their printed AI collaborated artwork home.
Not interested in the dreams of a machine? Look around for a coffee machine, and let it search- and serve your dreams..
Motivated by curiosity and fascination for the fast developing field of artificial intelligence, I try to understand and shed light on the profound processes underlying AI methods that are transforming our world by approaching the topic from both a creative- and scientific perspective.
I believe current developments in AI will start a shift in the definition of art analogous to what the emergence of photography did in the 19th century. What is the job of an artist? Machine learning systems are showing increasingly strong capabilities for generating art on their own, and conditional techniques are already very effective as creativity enhancing tools, as a source of inspiration and for exploring possibilities. Changing the most creative parts of the process of creation into one of curation.
My inspiration and creativity arises from the space of exchange between people and artificial intelligence. I think that interactivity in art stimulates visitors to think and challenge their perceptions of reality, their place in the world and their understanding of others. Under this basis I aim to unveil relations between man and machine, analogue and digital, organic and mechanical. Above all, I aim to raise awareness of the power of machine learning as a creativity enhancing tool and the possibilities it creates for anyone, even those that do not feel creative, to create.
