When Scott wants to augment his artistic practice, he turns to deep neural networks. The expressive, novel figurative representations that emerge from that exploration take on a life of their own.
The final drawing, the “blueprint”, encodes all the information needed to recreate the final sculpture (as long as one has the neural network to uncompress/expand it). The process of developing the final piece involved many iterations of line placement, weigh, and silhouette refinement—effectively drawing the sculpture I wanted. It’s instructive to compare the drawing with the final piece to understand how the neural network interprets the lines as instructions for establishing plane changes.
Humanity (Fall of the Damned)
2019
Archival Print on Dibond, Edition of 5
Take the journey with the artist by swiping left to right to see the evolution from the preparatory drawing to the final rendered artwork.
Scott’s ‘Figures’ dataset comprises 30,000+ unique photographs that he shot in the studio from a diverse set of volunteers over a two-year period. The usability of a neural network is often directly related to the quality of the training inputs, so carefully curating these was critical to building AI tools in his artistic practice.
Scott is an artist, educator, and creative technologist residing in London, UK. His work pushes the boundaries of figurative representation by combining traditional craft with contemporary digital tools. He got his master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab and studied academic drawing and sculpture in Florence, Italy. In addition to his own practice, Scott frequently collaborates with other artists and studios, as well as consulting widely in the visual effects, animation, and games industries.
AI can be used by artists as a tool, a collaborator, or a muse, influencing their artwork in different stages of their process. This panel of artists from around the globe will compare how they combine their fine art backgrounds with their futuristic art practices.
This panel discussion with the GTC AI Art Gallery artists, Anna Ridler, Scott Eaton, and Sofia Crespo will explore their personal journeys that led to connecting AI and fine art, how the technology has influenced their artistic process, why AI is important in the broader field of fine art, how art education intersects with AI education, and whether AI will be capable of achieving autonomous control over the creative process.
