If it’s 1024 x 1024, you are a saint. But don’t worry too much. Take a picture, and send it to me. I’ll handle it!

What I’m Going to Do

I am an artist working with images and text generated by Artificial Intelligence systems. To get an AI to make images, we need massive amounts of photographs for it to look at.. I’m hoping I can get that from people right now, people staying at home and looking for something to do.

I will take those photographs and store them in a database. When I have enough — something like 5,000 images, but the more the better — the algorithm will look through all of those photographs, analyze what they have in common, and produce something new. I think it’s an appropriate metaphor for what we are all doing: enduring something together, something common, in the hopes of creating something new in the end.

For this project, we will have a short video, which is called a “latent space walk” in the AI world. It’s a video showing us every possible permutation of our collective living rooms, bedrooms, and the world outside. In other words, we’ll be able to take a “walk” through new possibilities.

What will it look like in the end?

I have no idea until we try. It could be terrible, in which case I’ll share it and we’ll all have a good laugh. Very likely this thing is going to be a weird, abstract mess. That is, very likely, the outcome, but that is the fun of an experiment: think of this as a giant collaborative Polaroid picture that we don’t know will look good when it finally develops but was fun to take.

It also, very well, could be something visually interesting. In the end, it will be the first really global AI art project to come out of this global pandemic, and maybe that gives all of us something to do for five minutes: a collaboratively constructed dream about this very weird moment in time.

Why are you doing this?

I keep reading about how many people are under lock down as a set of numbers. I know that each of those numbers is a set of joys, of boredom-busting spontaneity, multitudes of individual anxieties and loneliness. I like the idea of analyzing what they have in common. This is why the window must be in the picture! This gives the machine a common point to focus on.

What about surveillance and algorithms? That stuff is scary.

Yes it is, and if you don’t want to be credited, I won’t! If you want to be credited, please say so in the email. Otherwise, if you email me, I will assume you are OK with the contribution being anonymous. If you’re worried about being identified, don’t send a photo! I promise I won’t be mad.

But if you do, please give me your name to be credited. I may also include your name and/or photo in the final project. But the video itself won’t even have your photo — your photo will just be used as a way to imagine other photos. That’s why it’s called a “latent space” walk. It will make more sense when you see it.

Stay home. Stay safe! We should limit our walks outside, but we are free to walk endlessly in latent space.

QUICK VERSION:

Take a photo outside of a window in your home, or wherever you are. Make sure the window is in the center and that we can see what is outside of the window. Optional: Make sure the photo is 1024 x 1024 or at least square shaped, instead of a rectangle. But it’s ok if you can’t do that. Email it to me at epiphemera@gmail.com.

THANKS!

-eryk salvaggio