Along with my colleague Ben Aranda, we hosted our inaugural Workshop on Generative Art, Architecture & Engineering Collaboration. Leading practitioners in the field of generative art, design and machine learning presented their work and engaged in a discussion led by students. This workshop was an extension a multi-year effort to explore generative algorithms and Machine Learning at Cooper Union through a series of interdisciplinary seminars and studios, where students from the art, architecture and engineering schools work together.
Our panelists included:
Adam Berninger, Founder, Tender
Neta Bomani, Artist, Learner, Educator
Andrew Kudless, Professor University of Houston, Founder Matsys
Zach Lieberman, Artist, Professor MIT Media Lab
Ingrid Burrington, Writer, Artist
Marcelo Coelho, Head of Design at Formlabs, MIT Department of Architecture
R. Luke DuBois, Artist, Associate Professor of Integrated Design & Media, NYU
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Artist, Learner
As part of this workshop, we also exhibited the work from our Generative Machine Learning for Architecture and Art course. Some of the work is shown below.
Emotions
The user sits inside a mirrored chamber, where an AI detects their emotion. These cues are fed to a generative algorithm which creates images illuminating the chamber.
Team: Sue Zhou, Nicole Joseph, Anne He
Replacement
This piece classifies the users age, gender, race, and emotion. It then replaces the users face with a generated version of themselves as the AI sees them. It can be deeply unsettling to see yourself replaced, particularly when the biases of AI are revealed in the process.
Team: Aiden Shankman, Garret Ingman, Samuel Finley
Stable Blocks
This project allowed users to play with simple kindergarten blocks, take pictures, and ask them to be realized into architectural buildings
Cellular Automata
This video uses 3-dimensional cellular automata and generative images to envision the growth and decay of buildings:
Team: Daniel Matallana, Leslie-Fairuz Abad-Neagu, Gavri Kepets