The first AI art gallery in Europe

Dead End Gallery, Amsterdam.

‘Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.’ – Edgar Degas

Earlier this year, I headed off on a research trip across Europe with a group of students to explore the potential of AI and social inclusion. This is an annual research trip funded by NTU Global. Our findings were fed back to councillors from Ashfield, Bolsover, and Mansfield with the hope that it may inform future policy. Suggestions had to be affordable, realistic, and sustainable, and take into consideration the ‘invisible labour’ required to maintain them in the future.

We took our main inspiration from Dead End Gallery in Amsterdam, the first AI Gallery in Europe. The gallery was established because nobody would host their AI artwork due to copyright issues. Presumably this was based on two concerns: Only humans can be granted copyright so who owns the artwork? Given the controversy created by David Slater’s ‘Monkey Selfie,’ this is understandable. In terms of generating images, what are they based on and how is the information sourced? Perhaps they wanted to avoid scenarios such as the Alden Capital lawsuit where eight U.S. newspapers are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.

This quote is usually attributed to Einstein but I think it is by the philosopher C.E.M. Joad.

Our main concern related to creativity. We create art because we want to share our stories with the world and these stories are based on our unique social circumstances and experiences. How could AI create art when it has no history or lived experience?    

Dead End Gallery have attempted to address this question of authenticity by creating profiles for its artists Irisa Nova, Maximilian Hoekstra, Lily Chen, and Amani Jones. Each artist is fed a series of questions (Do you have a partner? What is your favourite colour?) to slowly develop a profile and personality.

To ensure integrity, they created an AI curator which decides whether art submitted by the AI artists is displayed in the gallery. To be included, artists must score 8 or above out of 10. Likewise, they have attempted to replicate the process of learning an artist goes through by feeding the AI ‘drugs’ to see if this would lead to more surreal artworks or a different artistic outlook. This was partly to address criticisms that AI artwork lacks emotion.

Edgar Degas once argued that ‘Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.’ We want to develop this principle further and ask, how can AI help us see marginalised people? With training and support, AI has the potential to help marginalised groups participate in culture by creating art from home. This could be published at low cost across a variety of media to ensure to reaches a broad audience, as indicated in the table below.

Extract from poster created by students in their pitch to councillors.

But it’s always good to think big, too.

Ashfield has recently invested in the Automated Distribution and Manufacturing Centre (ADMC) which is a national centre of excellence for automation. Investing in the first AI Gallery in Britain would help develop the area further as a hub of digital innovation. It could act as a teaching space (perfect for school trips) or lead to new courses being developed at local education establishments. This would form part of a ‘clustering’ strategy to help regenerate the area.

It is worth noting that younger people, such as my students, feel excluded from politics, and that their concerns about the economy and the climate go unheard. Participating in this research project and having access to decision makers has helped them see they can make a difference and that their opinions are valued. Indeed, one council member has invited all the research groups to feed back their ideas at an Executive Board meeting. It is a fantastic opportunity, and has certainly restored my faith in the political process, at least on a local level.    

Dead End Gallery, Oude Braak 16A, 1012 PS Amsterdam

Tel. +31 (0)6-33677773 ai@deadendgallery.nl

deadendgallery.nl

Ai and the importance of delayed gratification to creativity

Ai has appeared out of nowhere and promises to solve every ‘problem’ for the creative industries from writing fiction to creating award-winning photos to producing videos. The narrative underpinning the solutions is one of ease and convenience, but it also removes process, context and knowledge. Although there are many benefits to Ai I fundamentally disagree that progress should be defined by speed and have outlined the arguments for why delayed gratification is important to creativity in the latest issue of Viewfinder 122 – a publication that focuses on the moving image and sound in education.

Firstly, we learn through practice. It is in doing things that we acquire knowledge. In education this is referred to as active learning. To strip away this experience and get Ai to do all of the work for you is to make your brain redundant. There’s a lot of bullshit doing the rounds about how the skill is in the instructing of the Ai but let’s not confuse this with autonomy or creativity. It’s like saying you do all of the washing because you’ve poured conditioner into the Hotpoint and pressed 40 degree spin cycle.

Secondly, we develop skills through practice, and this encourages finesse. For example, when I made my first Locating Lawrence video on YouTube I recorded my audio and added images. Then I began to add sound effects for emphasis. Now I do all of these things and select a relevant fade out track. The June 1923 video ends with D.H. Lawrence declaring ‘we have to be a few men with honour and fearlessness, and make a life together,’ so I added the opening chords of ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ the theme tune to Rocky. People of a certain age will get this, and it adds another layer of meaning to the video. Others won’t get the reference but can enjoy the video for its content. The point is that producing work each month creates the desire for improvement and experimentation. With Ai you just press enter.

Lastly, it is in searching for relevant images to accompany the audio that knowledge is acquired. This month I discovered that Lawrence was reading Soeur Philomene (1890) by the Goncourt brothers. I did some further research and found that Edmund and Jules Goncourt were unique siblings in terms of literary history in that they wrote all their books together and did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules’s death in 1870. I would not have discovered this if I had let Ai to do the work for me. Research creates intrigue. Intrigue creates knowledge. Knowledge creates wisdom.

My career as a digital storyteller involves finding innovative ways to explore literary history and tell stories. As an academic, I have introduced new assignments to modules, such as visual essays (see above), so that students can embrace serendipity and discover new and interesting facts through their research. I want them to struggle and get frustrated so that they can feel the elation that comes with the finished output. Ai removes these fundamentals of what it is to be human; we should be concerned. But, as is always the case, this is down to the individual. If you want the immediate gratification and glory of something else creating something for you, go ahead. But if you want to push yourself to the limits, embrace the process and marvel at your creativity – while you still have it.

 

Related reading

‘The Importance of Delayed Gratification: D.H. Lawrence and the Visual Essay’ in Viewfinder 122: May, 2023

‘Rethinking Literary Heritage and the Traditional Dissertation’ in Makings Journal (Studio), May 2022

‘How Best to Celebrate Literary Heritage?’ in Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies (JDHLS) Vol 6 (1) 2021

ViewFinder newsletter mailchi.mp/learningonscreen.ac.uk/viewfinder-the-digital-humanities