'Paper'

June 14th

Short papers / Reinventing the Colonial Gaze Employing AI: a Case Study

Authors: Marinos Koutsomichalis, Alexia Achilleos

Work:

A case study of artistic research revolving around Cyprus’ colonial past. It pivots on an AI system trained on text from colonial handbooks of Cyprus so as to generate new colonial ‘gazes’ of Cyprus upon demand. Output text and imagery is used in a number of physical and digital artefacts.

Typology:

Paper

Theme: Digital Colonialism, Decolonisation, GAN, Text to Image Synthesis, Text Synthesis

Venue: CCCB

More information: https://marinoskoutsomichalis.com/projects/cyprus-as-ai-saw-it/

Abstract: This short paper accounts for a case study of artistic research revolving around Cyprus’ colonial past and inspired by present day decolonial affairs. The endeavour pivots on a hybrid AI system, trained on text from colonial handbooks of Cyprus (originally published when Cyprus was still part of the British Empire) and employing a custom image dataset meant to reflect this colonial view of the island. AI then generates new colonial ‘gazes’ of Cyprus upon demand. Output text and imagery is used in a number of physical and digital artefacts and events that are presented herein.

Biography: Marinos Koutsomichalis is an artist, scholar, and creative technologist. He is broadly interested in the materiality of self-generative systems, (post-)digital objecthood, sound, image, data, electronic circuitry, perception, selfhood, landscapes/environments, and the media/ technologies we rely upon to mediate, probe, interact, or otherwise engage with the former. He has exhibited or performed his work extensively and internationally and has held research or teaching positions in Greece, Italy, Norway, and the U.K. He is a Lecturer in Creative Multimedia at the Cyprus University of Technology (Limassol, CY) where he co-directs the Media Arts and Design Research Lab.

Venue

CCCB

Montalegre, 5 - 08001 Barcelona

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