Tabula Rasa

AI / machine learning generated images. 2019 - 2021.

Given that we can’t help but use human terms to describe the behavior of AI systems, might machine “emotions” be a new way for us to approach and understand AI? Could romanticism – emphasizing the free expression of the machine’s emotions as the most authentic source of aesthetic experience – be the foundation for a new AI aesthetic?

These image are an exploration of the materiality of AI. Treating the machine as a Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, I trained it with no more than a handful of images – solid colors or basic shapes. The resulting works ask us to consider the emotions that might be present in the machine as it creates.

For more on the concepts behind this work, see the essay Tabula Rasa.