This is an as-told-to dialog with Shane Guffogg, an American artist who launched “At the Still Point of the Turning World – Strangers of Time,” an exhibition of 21 work on the Venice Biennale earlier this month. This dialog has been condensed and edited for readability.
So, what I’m listening to once I paint is necessary. I take heed to Indian classical music, Gregorian chants, and a few obscure composers corresponding to Gyorgy Ligeti, Leo Ornstein, and Terry Riley. The music sparks my creativity and permits me to be utterly current and in that second.
For years, I’ve been preoccupied with what my work would possibly sound like. The AI revolution pushed me to seek for consultants who might assist me. My first level of contact was Radhika Dirks, an AI and quantum computing skilled. We had a few Zoom periods, and she or he advised me — to the perfect of her data — that no AI program might assist me. Instead, she instructed I create a visible alphabet that matched the musical chords I heard in my thoughts to colours.
I believed it might be a approach to propel my creativity. It additionally constructed upon the thought of an unconscious alphabet that has knowledgeable my artwork all through my profession.
I met with musicians and AI consultants to create a visible alphabet
I began by searching for musicians to collaborate with and met Anthony Cardella, a younger, extremely gifted pianist in Los Angeles. He’s a PhD pupil at USC and occurred to know — and even play — many obscure composers I take heed to once I paint.
We began collaborating. We would sit down and study my work collectively. I’d zoom in on a shade in Photoshop, take a look at it, and sensorially really feel the musical be aware. Then I’d inform Anthony. I’d say, for instance, I feel that is the colour of the be aware B. He’d hit the B, and I’d say, “No, that’s not it; try a B sharp?” After just a few trials, he’d immediately hit the appropriate notes. I’d know as a result of the colours would start to vibrate for me. Together, we have charted chords that correspond to 40 colours.
Soon after, I met an AI researcher named Jonah Lynch via mutual contacts. He works on the intersection of the digital humanities and machine studying. I invited him over to my ranch in central California and defined the work I had been doing and the way I created my work. We had lengthy discussions about artwork, poetry, and creating an AI algorithm that might be fed the chords.
He developed a program to “read” my paintings and convert them into music. I gave him the main colors I used in each painting and the chords I hear when I see those colors. Jonah watched videos of me painting, studied the movement of my hands, and wrote software that sampled images of the paintings, following my hand movements, and assigned each color sampled from the paintings to its corresponding chord. Then, he fed this sequence of chords into a neural network that has memorized most of the last 500 years of keyboard music. He prompted the network to “dream” of new sequences based on the color-chord sequences and the history of Western music to create pages of sheet music.
When I heard that music played back to me, it brought tears to my eyes. It was just a rough version of what I heard while painting, but I thought, “There it’s.”
I took the music back to Anthony, the pianist. Amazingly, I could point to the sheet music and tell him what compositions I was listening to while painting, and he’d say, “Yes, I can see it within the chords.” The Indian ragas, the Gregorian chants, the Ligeti, and Ornstein — they were all there.
Still, the music was largely a series of chords at that stage. Anthony said we could have melodies if we rearranged it a bit.
AI remains to be a device that wants human oversight
We composed music for a number of work and have performed it for audiences worldwide. We held a live performance final month on the Forest Lawn Museum in Los Angeles, the place I additionally had just a few work in a present. The viewers might take a look at the work whereas Anthony performed, which was a profound expertise. A few folks cried.
At the launch of my newest exhibition through the opening week of the Venice Biennale, Anthony performed the world premiere of a sonata he composed impressed by my portray, Only Through Time Time is Conquered, to a dwell viewers. After the efficiency, I talked to a number of folks, they usually stated they may see the place the colours and the notes met on the portray. It was one thing that they had by no means skilled.
I do know many individuals are very afraid of AI, and I, too, see it as a device that wants human oversight. It’s not a way to an finish. Still, it opened up many potentialities and enhanced my inventive course of. I do not know if I might have unlocked the musicality in my work in an actual method with out it.
Hear the sonata beneath: