Content Aware Studies
Content Aware Studies, 2018
Marble and 3D printed in polyamide sculptures, 2-channel video installation
As part of the group show 'Innovation as a Method' in Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
Produced in collaboration with Matthew Lenkiewicz
The project initiates an inquiry into the possibilities of AI and particularly Machine Learning to reconstruct and generate lost antique greek and roman friezes and sculptures by the means of algorithmic analysis of 3D scans of antiquity. It concerns about the potentialities of methods involving data, ML, AI and other forms of automations turning into semi- and quasi–archeological knowledge production and interpretations of history and culture in the era of ubiquitous computation.
An algorithm capable of self-learning is directed to replenish lost fragments of the friezes and sculptures. Based on an analysis of models, it generates models, which are then 3D printed in various materials and used to fill the voids of the original sculptures and their copies. The synthetic intelligence that tends to faithfully restore original forms, also produces bizarre errors and algorithmic speculative interpretations of, familiar to us, Hellenistic and Roman aesthetics, revealing a machinic understanding of human antiquity.
