AI Monday – Berlin – 02/12/2019

The last AI Monday Berlin was a very special one! The focus topic was AI and ART and we have been invited to a very special location to fit the topic: Kraftwerk Berlin with the “Latend Being by Refik Anadol” exhibit curated by LAS Light Art Space, a non-profit art foundation working at the intersection of art, new technologies and science.Art has the unique power to influence human emotions. Just imagine a time where systems read our facial expression or tone of voice and then create pictures or music that will trigger a certain (desired) emotion? Already today advertising works a lot around making us emotionally attached to certain products or services… how soon will intelligent systems be able to do that automated and even much better?Well, this AI Monday gave a us a glimpse of where this could go to. We heard artists and scientists who experiment and create art by using machine learning technology. We discussed the state of AI in art and music generation and many other things over drinks and food.Special thanks to Light Art Space team – especially Kirstina Leipold and Raukia Abrantes de Figueiredo who invited us this special location.Also a special thanks to team from Berlin Partner who are doing a lot to make Berlin the place for AI research, business etc. They are helping to organize this event since the beginning.To our speakers: First we had Sebastian Neitsch, Media Artist from the Duo “Quadrature”. He gave us an overview of his work, especially the “Artistic Interpretation of Extraterrestrial Noise using Artificial Intelligence”. He presented and shared his work on using contemporary methods of data handling to respond to extraterrestrial frequencies. How neural networks recognize familiar elements in the unknown. Artistic Experiments with Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, searching for human patterns or communication signals in the most foreign, archaic frequencies.Next up was the artist Sofia Crespo. In her talk themed “Artificial Creativity” she shared the journey of how she was introduced to machine learning, explaining the basic concepts that played a role in changing her way of seeing images and creating visual compositions. With an array of tools useful to AI tinkerers, she aims to inspire others to envision a new nature from a digital space.Last and my highlight of the evening was Christian Mio Loclair from the “Waltz Binaire” team. “Artificial Poetry” was the title. As a computer scientist and choreographer, Christian specializes in the intersection between art and technology. He explores “the poetic collision of human desire and cutting-edge technology [that] illustrate our present age with digital harmony and voltaic friction.” His talk was not just jaw dropping and poetic but also visually a piece of art.Eric Eitel needed to leave us earlier due to an emergency. But all is good by now and we have planned to invite him again on one of the next AI Mondays to come.With that have a nice Christmas time and I hope to see you all next year again.