This project was originally conceived in ~2020 as a method to gain intuition about convolution, GANs and generated imagery via experimentation. The neural networks created was designed to be trainable on easily accessible hardware (e.g. NVIDIA K80), with small datasets and to illustrate what sort of 'imagination' a machine is capable of. The original generation targets included: flowers, city skylines, nebulae, hands, fruit and birds.
The project was 'completed' and shared via Instagram and Twitter in 2020 and 2021 under the name random_praxis_memory.
In 2024, the project was revived in collaboration with Assistant Professor of Fine Art, Laura Perdrizet (University of Mount St. Vincent). Professor Perdrizet used the GANN's output to incite critical dialogue about 'AI' and to incorporate machine learning as a creative tool and as a source of art material in her studio art courses.
The resulting artworks and analysis are impressive and aspirational, well illustrating the potential for advanced machine learning techniques in human creative endeavors. The collaboration is ongoing and preliminary results were presented by Professor Perdrizet at the 2024 College Art Association conference in Chicago, IL.
This branch of the skylines repository serves as an archive of artifacts created for and relevant to the collaboration.