The Shard Transformation

What if AI could enable humans and nature to jointly repair human destruction? Technology is often seen as driving humans and nature apart. In this art project AI let’s them create together instead. Watch the movie below.

We’re living in a time of climate change and confrontation with nature. We need to rethink technology. No longer use it as a destructive force or a human tool, but as a medium to breed empathy and understanding between humans and nature. And eventually let humans and nature create a better world together.

It’s a transformative vision about technology that was the base for this art project. A different perspective in which technology is used to erase the illusionary boundaries between ourselves and nature. A change that will also require us to transform ourselves. The art project explores these ideas and hopes to energize the transformation.

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Background

In his work, artist Jeroen van der Most investigates how technology (in particular artificial intelligence) could erase the imaginary divisions between us and our surroundings. Which is not limited to the barrier between humans and nature. Technology might also lower the boundary between humans and other humans (like AI used to detect if Alzheimer patients suffer from pain), or humans and objects (think of smart machines). But also consider boundaries like those between us and the past or future.

Removal of the boundaries results in deeper relationships between the entities or forces that inhabit the environment. From increased mutual awareness and compassion, these deeper connections eventually result in shared creations that benefit the ecosystem as a whole.

When pursued, this vision on technology has consequences for art and design, which become less human-focused. Often, technology is seen as merely a human extension to a human creative. It is the human designer or artist who ultimately determines the outcome of a creative process. Van der Most explores how AI would enable forces like nature to become autonomous actors. That co-determine designs and the outcome of creative processes.

How it was made

The art project was worked on over the course of a year, starting just before the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020. A number of steps were taken to complete the project:

  1. First the artist broke a large number of mirrors. Location was the Amsterdam forest.

  2. He then took pictures of the individual shards. Which were numbered, digitalized, and prepared for further processing.

  3. Pictures were also taken by the artist of thousands of forest flowers. Surrounding the mirrors. A methodology was developed to do this, in which high resolution pictures were taken of the forest floor. Algorithms were then built to extract the flowers from the larger pictures.

  4. Then an AI (GAN) system was trained on the flower images. After analyzing thousands of flower shapes, the AI system can create new flower-like forms.

  5. The system was then combined with custom algorithms to calculate combinations and positions of the digitalized shards, that together resemble the flower-shapes in chaotic patterns.

  6. Printable documents are then generated by the system. With instructions that show the artist step-by-step how to rebuild the mirrors into the flower-shapes.

  7. Three final shard artworks were created by the artist based on the instructions. The shards were mounted on wooden plates (50 x 50 cm each) in black frames. A paint to which traces of forest soil were added, was used to give the wooden plates a dark color. The pieces can be seen as shared creations of nature and a human.

  8. A movie was created of the process.

  9. Publication of the movie and artworks inspires thought on new uses of technology, the role of the human, and destructive tendencies. The shared creations in this way eventually benefit the total ecosystem.

Earlier projects

The Shard Transformation continues the exploration of a line of thought that was developed in these two earlier art projects:

  • The Butterfly Paintings (2019), a first experiment to combine AI with the crude forces of nature to extend creative possibilities. An AI system was built to follow the flight paths of butterflies in video footage. The system creates lines where the butterflies fly. The generated shapes were then printed.

  • Letters from Nature (2020), in which AI (GPT-3) was used to give a voice to nature and warn and ask for help about climate change. Goal of Letters from Nature was to breed understanding and empathy between nature and humans.

The Shard Transformation is an experiment to go beyond understanding and empathy and facilitate shared creation. To let humans and nature, through AI, work together and create a healthier total ecosystem.