ART » Scott Eaton

Intersections, Times Square, NYC

ART

Apr 022024

TITLE: Intersections
MEDIUM: Digital (machine learning, animation)
RESOLUTION: Various (4k wide, 4k tall, 8k ultra-tall, 8k ultra-wide)
DURATION: 3minutes, looping
DATE: 2023

An experimental work that reflects on the vast technological landscape that surrounds us. The piece evolved from a single QR code photographed in a dirty alley, advertising an event long past. This source image, a simple but iconic reminder of our data-saturated existence, is distorted and remixed through layers of random processes using animation and machine learning. The original data is completely transformed into a cascading landscape of evolving geometry, structured but abstract and unpredictable, intermittently evoking ideas of the towering architecture, Art Deco, and endless city blocks of New York City. The result is a meditation on the complexity and unknowability of the digital landscapes that surround us.

Crossings I (Shibuya)
Instanbul Airport edit

ART

Apr 082024

TITLE: Crossings I (Shibuya), Istanbul edit
MEDIUM: Digital, 4k, 30fps
DURATION: 45 seconds
DATE: 2024

The first in a series of works highlighting our ubiquitous loss of privacy to public surveillance, here hijacking a public webcam pointed at Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. Unknowing participants create a data painting/collage with their bodies as they go about their daily routines. The work uses the current state-of-the-art in AI/machine learning tracking algorithms to identify and follow people in the crowd – each person assigned an ID and probability that they are human (displayed on the bottom of the screen at the start and end). Coloration is derived from their direction of movement, length of time that they have been identified and tracked, and their alogrithmic “humanness”.

This excerpt was designed for a daily take-over of the screens at Istanbul IGA Airport in April 2024.

Spherical Enumeration

ART

Feb 202024

TITLE: Spherical Enumeration
MEDIUM: Laser-fused polyamide
DIMENSION: 33x33x30 cm
DATE: 2022

Exploring the idea of a spherical zoetrope (a physical impossiblity). Here animating an abstracted figure cyclically standing, kneeling, and raising arms, abstracted through one of my experimental ‘geometry’ neural networks (used also in Intersections. The sculpture above is an excerpt from the animation.

Entangled II

ART, creative AI, machine learning

Nov 102023

TITLE: Entangled II
MEDIUM: Digital (photography, high-speed video, machine learning / AI)
RESOLUTION: 4k, vertical
DURATION: 5:00
DATE: 2019

Investigating the proposition that the sinuous, overlapping curves of viscous fluid flows match the folds, contours and overlaps of the human figure. The work takes high-speed video of paint in water and processes it through a custom neutral network (my “BODIES” network) to elicit continually evolving, rebirthing, almost human forms. The work plays with preception and our human-brains’ wiring for pareidolia – seeing and recognising things, especially human forms, in random objects.

ENTANGLED II, excerpt

Human Allocation of Space

ART, creative AI

May 252020

TITLE: Human Allocation of Space
MEDIUM: Bronze
DIMENSIONS: 50x75x25cm
EDITION: 5
DATE: 2019

A sculptural work ‘drawn’ by me. This piece was created using a custom ‘shape’ neural network that responds to my drawn inputs with sculptural form. I devise the “shape vocabulary” for the work by curating a dataset that teaches a bespoke AI/machine learning model how to translate drawing into extruded three-dimensional form.

Humanity (Fall of the Damned)

ART

Jun 192019

click for larger

TITLE: Humanity (Fall of the Damned)
MEDIUM: Archival print on Aluminium
DIMENSIONS: 210 x 165cm
EDITION: 5
DATE: 2019

Inspired by Peter Paul Reubens’ altar piece, Fall of the Damned. Hand drawn but painted using my bespoke “Bodies” neural network. Featured in my Artist+AI:Figures&Form exhibition at Somerset House, London in 2019. Subsequently exhibited at Ars Electonica & the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG).

The ‘cartoon’ for Humanity

Humanity (Fall of the Damned) at the Vancouver Art Gallery