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um hi
um U yeah I think I have to adapt a bit
to the stage but um welcome
um first thing I want to kind of put out
is that I'm an artist I'm neither a
theorist nor programmer I'm kind of in
between and I can do some things but
might not even understand what I'm doing
sometimes and um today I want to talk
about the aesthetically aesthetical
implications and possibilities of the
moving image and to a certain extent how
machine learning or artificial
intelligence shifts these possibilities
and um because I feel a lot of the
things I'm doing kind of come from
actually doing and showing them um a
large chunk of this presentation will
kind of revolve about my kind of prei
work but all my work have um has
something in common it's kind of um
trying to put the chaos in my head into
a certain reality from films and later
installations and helping me and maybe
others sometimes to make sense of the
world of our society from the reflection
and the kind of interpretation of the
work so these emotional
destillat try to connect to the viewer's
memory and and um yeah I'm interested in
breaking things to a certain extent but
but I'm always always interested in not
just showing this glitch of a blackbox
but try to integrated into
my visual or artistic language and
constantly refine it and um yeah I'm
starting usually with a direct impulse
coming from a drawing and trying to
embed my personal being in a gesture in
a
physicality in something that is um
capturing the moment and interestingly
uh the AI has kind of certain qualities
of drawings which
are which might be interesting to
explore but there's always the necessity
to have
an original or personal idea to start
with so um the first thing I did being
in
University uh centuries ago um was doing
experimental films where I tried to take
the properties of painting and drawing
and put them into motion combining them
with 3D shapes and animation
and um trying to do or trying to find
new ways of
expressing something visually and um
because there's not so much time today
all or most of my films can be seen
online and um yeah I'm I'm kind of
jumping in between uh different things
but as said they're always refined from
the project before
and after University I was kind of
thinking um okay I'm an experimental
filmmaker that that's not a normal job
but maybe I find a way to live with it
but I didn't the way I hoped maybe and
um had to kind of try to find ways to go
out of the cinema and create hybrid
films and with hybrid films I mean films
that are intended for a different
surface to be screened or projected on
and then sometimes if I feel the project
is right I take it back into the short
film realm
and it it took me quite some time
sitting in front of the computer trying
to figure out a visual universe and then
putting it back into something kind of
that is control
um colliding with
reality but but there are some
interesting kind of combinations that
happened and over
time I found that the image can be so
fluid it can start as a projection for a
building it can turn into a film and
then in a more classical way turn into
kind of the illustration for record
cover but um everything is kind
of kind of stuck in between these
different um
moments and um when I started working
with projection on
architecture I realized that all my work
is abstract everything I do is kind
of just looking to create in emotion
trying to um recreate something I
experienced there or want to experience
there and
um
it's really hard to capture these
moments because you're if you're in the
space
um you you can kind of immerse into it
and the word immersion is something
quite kind of
current but still it it's a good
description of
it but um nevertheless I'm I've been
working yeah for more than 20 years now
trying to find different ways to to show
my work here for example projecting on
sculptures that are kind of laser cut
sculptures made out of uh different uh
films or
moving
um surface PES that kind of shift the
image that
is quite kind of precisely constructed
in um yeah for me unpredictable
ways and also trying
to adapt the language of um art or art
history I try to explore concepts of
overpainting for example
um uh in this case uh Greek or yeah
Greek uh sculptures or plaster cast of
Greek sculptures I worked on projecting
on dinosaur skeletons in Mongolia or
kind of um staging laser drawings
in um old buildings and with all of that
there's always kind of this search for
something new for something exciting I
pushed it into other Realms of doing
work on laser drawings on mountains
projecting on fog projecting on water
doing all these things that are kind of
trying to make the things come out of
the screen and kind
of flow into different shapes and states
and then um in recent years I'm
sometimes doing
performances um projecting on for
example here uh a group of
performers uh using paper to build
Dynamic sculptures and I thought oh that
could be an interesting way of
um going into new territories and
finding new
ways um to present my work in
combination with the ultimate kind of
unpredictability Being Human
performers but then um yeah Corona
happened and nothing happened
anymore and
um this was it not exactly the first
time but but kind of the most prominent
and maybe also the reason why I'm here a
time where AI came
into play and interplay with my work and
um therefore I want to show one film and
I said the other films are online but
this one is there but this one I want to
show on the screen and then maybe go
into more confusing
things so maybe we can switch off the
stage light and now have 4 minutes 30
of uh a
film yeah hopefully with
sound is there
sound oh
it
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my
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p
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oh
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oh
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every
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his
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oh
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yeah
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thank you
um so this was historis and kind of the
um
artistic kind of result or I don't know
explosion or whatever coming from um the
pandemic and the combination with the
advances in machine
learning
um the the
film yeah I think is was only possible
thanks to Tui um a performer I met in
Berlin some years ago and um with an
interesting kind of quality maybe to say
because she came to an exhibition of
mine and spent an hour in the exhibition
watching works and usually at least at
openings
um
yeah the art is usually the backdrop for
social interactions but it's not really
about the art and and I found it um
exciting that there was someone I didn't
know and that kind of reacted so
strongly and with the first lockdown
ending um we thought or I I asked Suki
if there's a way to to meet and to
project on her record everything and try
to make sense of Our Lives again and
um
on a technical note um for my stuff I
was using touch designer kind of
creating these feedback loops uh kind of
projecting the drawings or moving
drawings and trying
to um be as flexible as possible because
usually I work for weeks and months on
something and here the this this moment
of Performing and interacting was very
strongly and um I
felt um that it's something I was forced
to learn in a way and the other thing
that most of you might uh find a bit uh
silly but but I'm very thankful for
something like Google collab back in the
days it offered kind of access to
something that was um not accessible
usually before for artists or not as
easily you had access to um a decent GPU
you had access to something kind of
created by a lot of people in Python and
um I was using VQ Gan and clip at that
time um created by Catherine cwon and I
found it interesting how um this was
2021 so it's kind of completely obsolete
but but I tried to create something that
is to a certain extent Timeless because
it's kind of moving within um an art
historical latent space so you have
suuki performing me projecting the
drawings and then I'm kind of um trying
to move
through um
human the the history of human artistic
achievements from Renaissance painting
to charcoal drawings to I don't know um
plaster cast and um with this kind
of knowledge to my hands I was trying to
make sense of the world again and also
trying to kind of portray the
transformational process suuki was going
through so this
this film is I don't know
um maybe doesn't make much sense for
most of the time but it doesn't try to
and it's kind of
a testament in the sense uh like most of
my work that it's um functionless
because I don't want to tell a story I
don't want to sell you anything I don't
want to communicate a specific idea I
just want to open this this confusing
space and some people might just ignore
it and others kind of create
connections and this kind of infinite
field of
connections is kind of
these few bullet points I will go
through as an anecdotal evidence of my
work with
AI it's to a certain extent very dated
but it also is um yeah
maybe in in the sense Universal that
that you have to experience it in these
specific cases to really understand
what's happening I mean it's clear that
AI
will uh kind of influence everyone and
everything it will dissolve boundaries
for me it was kind of the boundary of a
specific
medium it was interesting how the
creation process becomes more
conceptual and it's really hard to break
out of a certain kind of culture of
templates or presets because it's so
overwhelming to have this access that
you feel kind of just diving through the
given possibilities is enough to fill a
lifetime but um the other side of it and
now being like 2 and a half years into
uh this AI Revolution is that it seems
that no
stone is unturned nothing is not turned
into a business model that tries to
sayell you kind of the user or the data
the user created back to the
user and it's still not fully clear to
me why or it's clear to me but it's
surprising to me that um
destroying kind of the jobs of artists
of illustrators which have been
precarious in the first place and which
had to survive somehow for centuries and
now there these big corporations come
along and take away these things and
just kind of put it out for
everyone and um of course you can then
discuss if it's
still art
into art that is created by by the
machines but in the end um if there
enough people that think these creations
are art um the artists don't have a
saying
anymore um the other interesting thing I
found for myself and these points are
clear to most of you I'm sure but I
still found it interesting that the
quality or the non-quality of the
training
in these models is sometimes so absurdly
bad there are kind of image image
compression compression
artifacts artist signatures croppings
framings that don't make any sense and
it shows that nobody gives a [ __ ] about
the creation of these data sets and
um I was just kind of trying to to
figure out a certain artistic style and
time period And I was just wondering why
these images that created the vi viq G
created were that bad until I realized
oh obviously there were so small
resolution images in this data sets for
this specific pocket that it wasn't
possible to create an kind of working
image out of that and the other thing
which is kind of covered by the bias of
course is um that I was born in former
Eastern
Germany and there's this talk about that
certain continents and countries are
under represented and it's also the case
for kind of the time I grew up and it's
interesting that this is kind of
completely kept out of the data sets and
with kind of the explosion of these
tools these things start to disappear
more and more because the AI generated
art is kind of going back into these
data sets and I wonder what what will
remain because I mean most people are
kind of attracted to this mid Journey
glossy 3D rendering style but there's so
much more and I don't know what will be
left
um that's something I kind of just
mentioned before that this kind of
access to software to public software is
highly interesting I've been following
um kind of computer Graphics papers from
sigre like 20 years and it's the first
time that something goes directly from
Research into kind of being an
accessible tool but on the same hand the
phenomenon of app culture is kind
of
kind of going into this process that
software will break faster and disappear
much faster than ever before and it's
interesting that I created this film
like 2 and a half years ago and some of
the things are not reproducible that
easy again because some of the libraries
have been updated and nothing works
anymore
um with this comes also kind of
something from the title but also in gen
in general
observation that it's the first time
that this uh attraction I had to drawing
kind of this spontaneous and direct
conversation with my hand and my body is
now available in tools to create
images and it will be very interesting
when there will be more refined uis to
curate and M mutate through these
different data set spases
and I wonder for myself and also for
everyone
else what will happen if we just become
completely overwhelmed by the
possibilities and kind of
um the feeling that nothing will ever be
finalized and this feeling is very
strong for me because I often suffer
from not finishing or not finding
something that feels kind
of like a result so yeah I really hope
that we don't lose kind of the drive
after everything has been kind of put
into these optimization and kind of
variation
processes um how much
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time ah okay um the other thing that is
also just a side note and there just
three more to go um it's interesting how
there are now Stars so there's kind of
this social media phenomenon that is
known from music and fashion is now part
of um the art world where art
influencers or AI art influencers gain
access to technology and kind of create
an hype cycle and that
um
the often kind of banality and
obscurity are taking over just kind of
creating variations of Hollywood and
memes and on the other hand having kind
of artistic positions
like painters from Poland like bashinski
that was creating very specific paint
paintings now are kind of a known
keyword in these prompts and I feel that
that the the whole idea of art is kind
of turned upside down because the
democratization on the one hand on the
other hand um these companies that have
no real interest in art history and art
are kind of just pushing out
tools and we are kind of stuck between
the obscurity and kind of the influence
of different um cultural
spheres and because it's so overwhelming
also the um Contemporary Art world is
adapting this visual language and it
tries to kind of appropriate it and this
is something I found quite surprising
and to to end my talk um I really
hope that this full access to Human
creativity makes it possible in the end
or on the way uh to find alternative
histories to find hybrids to revision
certain cultural terms because there's
no way back I think the the impact on
the visual is Unstoppable in all the
other fields as well and um yeah I
really hope that there
will be a chance that we learn to
differentiate more between the signal
and the noise and kind of
distribute our attention accordingly and
yeah that's it and I'm sorry that it's
kind of a wo but maybe some questions
can
shape um your impression of
that
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so please line up behind the microphones
if you have questions for
Robert and also you can pose the
questions via the Internet and then the
signal angel will read them out um
microphone number two please hi um thank
you so much for your talk uh it's really
cool to see an artist at this
convention um
I was just wondering um I was just
thinking during your talk that um it's
kind of like a conversation with AI in
terms of like AR generated art between
the artist and the the tool or the
machine and I'm wondering if you feel
like that conversation goes both ways
sometimes like you're inputting the
prompts and you have a certain idea of
what you want and then the AI generates
what it thinks of those prompts and then
of course there's
reiterations um do you ever feel
inspired ired by what the AI
produces inspired even to the extent
that you return to like drawing like
pencil paper and paint to kind of
imitate what you've seen
generated
um it's it's the inspiration is there
it's it's for me the the film is made
out of hundreds of versions of these
sequences and found it kind
of to be a relief that I could try
something in that style and that style
and try to see if I can match up things
that would be not possible just um in um
in the sense of spending time with
something but but I know I'm in a Kind
of Wonderful position to choose and to
look and see around but but I know that
for everyone else this will be kind of
hell because you have to optimize and to
find the best thing in short time and um
I haven't been trying to draw these
things but but I'm I found it really
interesting in confronting it with uh
projections and the physical space to
see how these things um can be adapted
to
physical
momentum but I haven't been kind of
finding a good
um yeah opportunity to to really show it
it's also because of Corona a lot of
things just disappeared festivals
disappeared exhibition spaces and it's
um yeah the next year definitely will be
interesting we hope so right thanks now
we have a question from microphone
number one yeah thanks for thanks for
the talk very inspiring very interesting
didn't know this was this was possible
using AI um question regarding the
training data behind the models you used
uh are you bothered with the question of
consent so that artist said yes you can
use
my my art as a training input and does
it bother you if your art is used for as
training
data um that's a very broad question and
that's why I was using the viky Arts
data set because it's kind of have all
trained on on images that are out of
copyright uh
requirements and I I also have been
specifically using it because I wanted
to see what's possible in there and of
course using something like clip on top
of it you don't really know what's you
know that there's very unethical data in
there and and I I have friends that try
to kind of um train their own models and
I also try to train or I try to train my
own models these days it's been much
harder back then so there's a lot of
things happening and especially with
kind of tool chains like using comfy UI
there are things where you can use a
single image not only as a style
transfer but also as a kind of your own
filtering system so
I think it ties to the point that you
made about uh public uh software so open
source yeah yeah giving the tools yeah
and also the training data of course but
sorry don't want to take too much time
for the next question yeah no no I just
just want to say about kind of um if I
feel kind of things are taken from me
because this is something that is
sometimes left out of this dialogue
um I feel yes there's no not much of my
work in these data sets but yet
I but I feel um no nobody ever has cared
for artists and I mean there are kind of
things like uh fogy buun and these
things that Tred to create something but
but it has never been a discussion and
it wouldn't be if it would be just about
artists I mean this today the New York
Times was uing open AI on Microsoft so I
think copyright only works above a
certain threshold of of importance and
that's something you learn while being
in this that your voice doesn't matter
for the whole so it's also a bit
humbling and I think we have a question
from the internet and then it looks like
we have three more questions in the room
yeah question from the internet um are
you aware of Peter Gabriel
panopticum it seems that a very similar
visual style was used and maybe the
tools were similar
to um I mean if it's the kind of
competition of Peter Gabriel for the
music
videos um which was run by stable
diffusion I think um yes and the styes I
was using in this specific example on
nothing new because I tried to navigate
art history and um because there are
certain styles that are very kind of
interesting to the
eye maybe phrase it as this mid Journey
style they have a um strong impact on
that and I I'm not sure if if we can
escape this kind of standardized look
because um it's so effective in a sense
and with my new work I tried to step
away from that but it was just kind of
an exploration ground and um yeah good
we have a question from microphone
number two yes hi um as you mentioned
the pace of advancement is so fast that
the technology is uh getting rid of
really fast as well but there is uh some
special artifact that's tied to uh some
stages of tech and do you think there's
lost artistic value with those Tech
fading away in the distance like
nobody's using cnns for image generation
nowadays and stuff like
that um yes I think I mean like um deep
dream and all these things had kind of
their own style but um to be honest
mostly or most of the things are just
used for small tests for like some
Instagram video or some Meme and I try
to work I mean it's not a big work but
it's a 4minute
movie and I feel that a lot of these
things are not used to create something
that is more than just kind of this
sketchy
sketch um and with new tools like Runway
and Pika labs this will shift but but I
think these things will be emulated
simulated at a certain point like VHS
tapes or tape machines in music
but um with these emulations I don't
know how precise they will be because
the human eye is focused on specific
things and
um yeah I don't know if if we will be
aware enough to see these small details
that that come with it but it's an
interesting question to think about we
have two more questions left we have
about 1 minute so microphone number one
and then then microphone number two
really short and short
answer maybe a bit continuation on the
question you just asked about iterations
On Tools it's a pretty Modern Art
concept to sort of play with the same
tour and understand the craftsmanship of
it what do you feel about yourself as an
artist within this change of thought
that you don't really have control and
then it iterates again and again and
then microphone number two well can I
answer first or oh well I was thinking
if we if you wanted to answer both the
questions okay we do
question um I mean this concept of
craftsmanship is something that I tried
to kind of develop for 20 years using
kind of the same tools trying to grow
and understand and now it's like things
are thrown at you and you have to learn
not to catch try to catch
everything and for my work in that point
I was not looking at Reddit and Discord
anymore but worked for like 4 months on
this specific thing without taking input
or far less input than usual and um it's
a good question overall if if this kind
of
acceleration will kind of take away all
of our attention span and skills because
the AI is kind of replacing this and I'm
I'm worried and I have a hard time
adapting but I'm quite sure and I
cussers with a friend in the morning
that a younger generation doesn't know
per se what what it's been like being a
master working with the software for
several years because it's there and
there might be people going back but I
don't know it will will be interesting
how they navigate this
Freedom thank you thank you very much
Robert and please give Robert a round of
applause
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