Artwork title : 1,2,3,6 : degrees of freedom with dragonfly, water ouzel, black stork and grasshopper

This work maps the interstitial space between the figurative and the abstract using an artificial perception that plays the role of an observer with its own idiosyncratic criteria for recognizability.

Degrees of freedom refers to the number of parameters in a configurable system, the number of elements and ways these elements can be altered or arranged. For this series, we used an AI model trained on a large number of photographs labeled with object names. This AI is typically used to recognize and classify concrete objects in photographs, but instead, we use it to construct compositions with a small number of geometric elements that are highly recognizable as a certain object or animal. In this way we reveal the specific capacity to abstract inherent within an artificial perception designed to recognize photorealistic images.

The particular work consists of groups of 4 panels, with an increasing number of brushstroke-like geometries {1, 2, 3 and 6} whose arrangement is driven towards maximizing the recognizability of a certain object by the AI.

Work info
Title: 1,2,3,6 : degrees of freedom with dragonfly, water ouzel, black stork and grasshopper
Size: 1320mm x 1320mm
Media: MIXED MEDIA, (a collage of overlapping cutouts made of paper painted with black ink and acrylic varnish with a strong uniform brush stroke)
Year: 2022