Imitation Game at the Vancouver Art Gallery

 AI, creative AI, machine learning, news
Mar 092022
 

Imitation Game AI Exhibition Poster, Vancouver Art GalleryEntangled II at The Imitation Game

I am excited to have an entire room dedicated to my artwork at the recently-opened feature exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, “The Imitation Game – Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

the venerable Vancouver Art Gallery

The groundbreaking show gives insight into the development and impact artificial intelligence is having on art, creativity, and wider visual culture. I have a collection of large pieces in the show as well as a series of development ‘sketches’ that are being shown in public for the first time. If you’re near Vancouver definitely check it out, the show will be running until October 23, 2022!

Caffeinated Diversions, drawings processed by custom neural networkCaffeinated Diversions, 2019

Scott Eaton's machine learning experiments at the Vancouver Art GalleryA wall of displays showing Scott’s machine learning video works

Scott Eaton's Humanity (Fall of the Damned) at the Vancouver Art Gallery Humanity (Fall of the Damned)

‘Out of Distribution‘ Talk at the VIEW Conference, Turin, Italy

 AI, creativity, news
Nov 162023
 

Scott Eaton giving Out of Distribution talk at View Conference 2023Talking about the making of Spherical Enumeration

I recently gave a talk at the VIEW Conference, in Turin, titled:

Out of Distribution: Thriving Creatively in the Age of AI

The talk gives my current take on the state of AI and how we, as artists and creatives, need to think about situating our work in relationship to this ever-more-disruptive technology. (the talk now available on-demand on the VIEW Conference’s plaform here). The talk blurb:

In this densely illustrated talk, Scott explores how we can maximize our human creative potential in the face of the tidal wave of capabilities from the latest AI tools. He explores the trajectory of the field of AI, covering the critical ideas that have led us to where we are now. He asks the question on everyone’s mind – what space will be left for artists and creatives as more powerful AI inevitably arrives, and how should we think about situating our work and careers in the face of this constantly accelerating technology? Scott showcases his recent projects and gives examples and anecdotes from his own work with machine learning over the past seven years, including a behind-the-scenes look at his recent takeover of Times Square.

Scott Eaton on stage at the View Conference, showing himself holding a stack of sketchbooks.Talking about the importance of drawing in one’s creative practice. Mini-me and large me, juxtaposed.

Artist Residency at Meta AI (FAIR)

 AI, creative AI, creativity, machine learning
Jan 022023
 

Meta AI

I recently completed a year-long artist residency with Meta’s Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR). While I’ve always had mixed feelings about corporate Meta (formerly Facebook), I have nothing but respect for the research that FAIR does in AI and machine learning. It was a privilege to spend time within that organisation pursuing a number of interests in art, creativity, and machine learning.

The work was largely experimental, often extensions of explorations I had started prior, but I appreciated having the time and resources (read: compute) to investigate more deeply. The work included investigations into human pose estimation and tracking, interpretability of vision models, geometric abstraction, color theory, and generative networks. The focus was not so much on advancing any state of the art in machine learning, but more on utilizing and extending existing ML tools and techniques to make new creative works. I will post a few of the more interestesting experiments here when I find time.

Perpetual Now II, installation by Scott Eaton, large outdoor screen, reflecting in watera still from Perpetual Now II, Living Canvas, Dublin, 2022

One of the moving image pieces created during the residency recently finished a three month run on the Living Canvas in Dublin Ireland (the largest outdoor cultural screen in Europe, approximately 4x20m, see above). A second work, Intersections, will premiere in New York City later in 2023.

Nvidia Art Gallery

 AI, creative AI, machine learning
Nov 242021
 

link to gallery

For the last couple of years, I have been fortunate to be curated in Nvidia’s AI Art Gallery. There are a couple of recent works featured there (which are already familiar to anyone who has explored this site) but each has additional background and context. You can also find a couple of recorded discussions I’ve had with other amazing artists creating in this space. These are available for viewing at the bottom of the gallery page (link here).

Wall of Caffeinated Diversions

 AI, creative AI, drawings
Aug 172019
 

Caffeinated Diversions on display at Scott Eaton's Artist+AI exhibition at Somerset HouseCaffeinated Diversions, 50x archival prints, 21x15cm

People who know me know that drawing in essential to my creative process. Over the last couple years I have been using part of my morning drawing time (yes, with a coffee… or two, or three), to create input drawings to test my Bodies neural network, which I trained on a portion of my BodiesinMotion.photo library.

Caffeinated Diversions close upclick for larger

The idea behind this “AI tool” is that I train it to learn the correspondence between my drawing style and photographic representations of the human figure, in this case photography carefully lit and shot by me in the studio. Then, once trained, I can use it to dynamically ‘paint’ my drawings in the style of my photography. It is a wondrous interaction, and there is a magical space where I can draw very stylized or abstracted figures and the neural network infers some very interesting anatomical results, always beautifully lit and shaded. The images here are from my wall of Caffeinated Diversions, fifty of the most interesting results from these morning experiments. The grey line drawings are my hand-drawn inputs, the coloured images the output of my Bodies network.

Wall of AI augmented drawings by Scott Eatonclick for larger

Beyond just the final images though, a large part of the magic that has captivated me when developing and using these AI tools is seeing the final image emerge as I draw it. Here is compilation of timelapses from these drawing sessions:

Human Allocation of Space – Artist:AI exhibit

 AI, creative AI, sculpture
Jul 072019
 

Human Allocation of Space, 2019. Bronze, 50 x 75 x 25 cm, edition of 5

A new sculpture which debuted at my Artist+AI: Figures and Form exhibition. This bronze (as with all works in the show), was created in collaboration with AI tools that I’ve trained as my ‘art assistants,’ in this instance one that translates my drawings into three-dimensional form.

I created this piece by drawing a ‘blueprint’, effectively the instruction set, which directs the AI to build volume, planes and edges in a certain way (based on the way that I originally trained the network, which is a sort of alchemy itself). Below you can see a side-by-side comparison of the ‘blueprint’ and the final sculpture. A video showing the process of creating the final bronze casting can be found HERE.

ai generated sculpture from Scott Eaton's drawing - blueprint for Human Allocation of Spacecomparison of ‘Blueprint’ and resulting bronze

Behind the Scenes 1 – Humanity (Fall of the Damned)

 AI, creative AI, drawings
Jun 102019
 

Scott Eaton's Fall of the Damned, work in progress.

Behind the scenes – prepping a piece for my “Artist+AI: Figures & Form” show opening next week at Somerset House. Suffice it to say, this will be a LARGE composition (22,000 x 17,000 pixels!). My drawing hand aches.

Show is free and runs from 19-23rd of June, so squeeze in a visit to Somerset House if you are near London.

Creative AI – extended presentation online

 AI, creative AI
Apr 122019
 

Artist+AI: Scott Eaton Lens Series 1Drawing plus AI – created using a bespoke neural network trained on my figure photography

I’ve just recorded and uploaded an extended version of my recent Creative AI talk. This talk summarises the last two years of my exploration into combining AI with my interests in photography, drawing and sculpture. The talk gives a good synopsis of the amazing creative potential of these tools. This is the first time I’ve shared the work in public, as I now feel it is mature enough that I am comfortable showing the results of my explorations. There are many more experiments and works-in-progress to be shared in the coming weeks and months, and of course mark 18-23 June in your calendar for a visit to my exhibition of this work at Somerset House, London (admission is free).

Please find the lecture here: