Bloemstilleven 12 Original

Bloemstilleven is a series of 12 artworks that are dedicated to transformation of culture and perception through technology. It symbolizes a result of a new approach to the genre, demonstrated by Machine Learning.

Each artwork is implemented on a display with the interactive feature. It reacts to the surrounding sound, depending on which the flowers on the display change their colours, shapes, style and even movement.

Revisiting Dutch and Flemish still-life today, we let Artificial Intelligence into classical images, making the initial semantic code even more complex. Using AI in a project reflects another tendency for a shift in people’s conscience, similar to that 17th century transition from a christianized to a secular one. During the last decade, different sections of our society become more and more technologized every year, software agents are increasingly present in our lives, and the amount of information we consume is growing. Our conscience becomes dependent on technology, our perception fragmentary and dissipated, and the visual esthetic of our project express those things.

In Bloemstilleven 12 we consider 17 century still-lifes as data that can be digitalized, structured, and subjected to machine processing, like any other type of information. During machine processing, an AI algorithm changes the image’s characteristics – structure, texture, and composition – by affecting it with random noise, so that every time the output is unique. AI transforms floristic images symbolizing brevity and decline of all things into abstract compositions with mystical digital sfumato.

This visual transformation witnesses a change in the conscience in general and in people’s relationship with semantic constructions in particular.
If in the 17th century it required encyclopaedic knowledge to decipher a still-life emblematically, in the modern world it is not necessary anymore: you do not have to be erudite when you can find any form and any amount of information on the Internet. One thing is still for certain: the spectator has always been a co-author, a co-creator of the meaning of any artwork, in the 17th century – by processing the image through their experience — as well as in the 21st century — setting parameters for a generative algorithm.