Video description: exhibition in Duisburg, Germany, December 2018.
“How Computers Imagine Humans?”, João Martinho Moura, 2017. Curated by Max Bilitza.
In this media artwork, AI is used against AI to discover How Computers Imagine Humans, using a selected computer visual noise (one computer) and an AI face detector system (another computer). Both systems running against each other.
Those faces don’t exist. Artificial intelligence (AI) can bring unprecedented benefits to society, but also it’s becoming potentially more dangerous. Don’t forget that AI is us, made by us and it’s being fed and improved by us every second.
Artwork link, statement, description, and publication here: How Computers Imagine Humans?

In current times where GANs (generative adversarial networks) are propagating and also saturating our screens, the subject of art made with AI it’s gaining attention and also reflections on how will we deal with this kind of medium in the future. So, inspired on the foundations of these GANs, I’m presenting a kind of very simple and almost manually made try, using a very well known algorithm used for face detection (a classical one) and an unusual use of its technique, intended to do the opposite of what it is supposed to achieve: instead of trying to locate and capture faces, I generate facial images ‘imagined’ by a computer through the exploration of hypothetical possibilities, starting just from visual randomness (as generating noise it’s a basic procedure on computers). More than what if offers in terms of visualization of what is behind algorithms, this work, as it is presented, with 2 machines interacting with each other without a wired or wireless connection, demonstrates the ‘knowledge’ we humans try to implement into machines to detect ourselves. A kind of awareness about these technologies and their effects (negative or positive) on our society. The result is a kind of a ghost-human face, made by mathematics and probabilities, appearing very slowly as the algorithms work over time. Mathematically calculated from noise, and, because of that … no soul, no history, no memory.

Video description: excerpts of the exhibition in Germany
Link to Vimeo and Youtube versions.