Invitation to the opening on March 8th: The AI-Experiment
The opening of the AI-Experiment, which was initiated by Bernhard Egger (junior professor for Cognitive Computer Vision) and realized together with Swiss artist and layer Hans Furer, will take place on March 8th, from 6 pm. The vernissage will be framed by various talks by Sabine Lang (the history of digital art), Bernhard Egger (how do AI models work), Eva Gengler (feminist AI) and Hans Furer and a panel discussion. The discussion will be followed by a reception; the 10 artworks created in the project will be on display at Cauerstrasse 11 after the opening.
When? March 8th, 2024, from 6 pm
Where? lecture hall H11, Cauerstraße 11, 91058 Erlangen
Please register for the event. Click here to register.
More information about the experiment and opening can be found here.
The opening will be streamed online here:
The event will be held in German!
About the AI-Experiment
The AI-Experiment was initiated by Bernhard Egger. He is junior professor for Cognitive Computer Vision at the Department of Computer Science at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Bernhard Egger worked in Hans Furer’s law firm during his computer science studies, and this led to a long-standing friendship. The prerequisite and ideal starting point for a joint AI experiment was that all images in Furer’s catalogue raisonné had already been photographed and published (www.hansfurer.com). A further prerequisite was that all images were dated so that they could be categorized chronologically.
Thanks to these specifications, the works could be entered into the AI in periods of ten years: 1971-1980, 1980-1990, 1990-2000, 2000-2010, 2010-2023. Around 100 images from each decade were fed into a generative image model as training data. From the images of each period, the AI generated numerous images as a “mixture”. From these, Bernhard Egger and Hans Furer selected one for each decade for the exhibition.
Hans Furer then painted each generated and selected AI image in his standard format (1 x 1 m, acrylic on canvas) exactly according to the electronic specifications. Furer describes and titles the resulting paintings as “AI images”. The artist then selected another picture that he had actually painted in the respective time period and painted this too – the “replica”. The pair, consisting of AI image and replica, represent the respective decade. The aim was to present the AI image and the replica to the audience as something similar yet different.
The artist began painting in July 2023 and finished the project in November 2023. He began with the decade 2010-2023, creating another pair every month. By November 2023 (1971-1980), he had worked through all decades. The interval of one month per decade was given as a guideline and gave the artist the space to process the “AI” experience emotionally and intellectually. At the same time, further texts were created during these months.
(Source: Translated from a text by Hans Furer and Bernhard Egger, March 2024, https://www.ki-experiment.tf.fau.de/)