Can we make artificial intelligence (AI) an addition to art? A research artist asked himself this question and tried to radically transform the representation of a poem. The result takes the form of slightly disturbing psychedelic images.
Two ways to use AI
Originally from Northern Ireland, Glenn Marshall is a computer scientist and artist who won the Prix Ars Electronica in 2015. In his latest work he has chosen to performance of the poem In the gloomy midwinterby the British Christina Rossetti (1830-1894).
Glenn Marshall used the artificial intelligence of two different ways. It first made it possible to create visualizations based on the text of the poem using the Story2Hallucination tool available on GitHub. It turns out that this gives the possibility to convert words to video. In passing, remember that the tool in question sometimes interprets certain words in a literal sense. As for narration, the researcher used vo.codes, another tool that enabled him to make a deepfake voiced by actor Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars). It should be noted that the tool is generally very useful for videographers as part of their streams.
A rather disturbing result
The result can be seen in the video at the end of the article. Everyone will form their own opinion, but from the images that are more like GIF in low resolution than real advanced animations. Moreover, the soundtrack embodied by Christopher Lee’s voice enhances this rather disturbing and darkly offbeat side.
This use of artificial intelligence in an artistic way may come as a surprise to many. Some developers get a lot of inspiration from this technology in the cultural field. In 2018, one of them had developed an AI philosopher whose aim was to answer questions. Users can then observe its development on philosophical themes such as love or the meaning of life. The results on these types of themes were quite convincing. On the other hand, the AI avoided taking risks when it came to issues that spilled over into politics.
Here is the interpretation of In the gloomy midwinter by Glenn Marshall’s AI:
