QUANTUM DREAMS
„QUANTUM DREAMS – In the subconscious of an artificial intelligence“.
Robi Voigt & Tobias Wursthorn
300° audiovisual installation
GAN, LDM, LLM, ChatGPT-4
Loop approx.60 min., 2021-2023
Dreaming together and digital cloud gazing in cooperation with two AIs.
The immersive installation QUANTUM DREAMS opens up the fascinating world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and new media art and invites the visitors to digital cloud gazing. Developed by New Media Artist Robi Voigt and Generative AI & Data Scientist Tobias Wursthorn, in collaboration with specially trained AI models, QUANTUM DREAMS provides a sensual and poetic approach to the latest possibilities of media art and current technological achievements in the field of language- and image-generating AI. For QUANTUM DREAMS Tobias Wursthorn trained image-generating Artificial Intelligence – so-called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Latent Diffusion Models (LDMs) – with an image archive of over 8800 paintings and drawings by a Swiss painter. Using machine learning algorithms, the neural networks learned from the digitized paintings and drawings what an image is, what its properties are, and how it can be designed. Based on this training material, the GANs and LDMs now generate „their own“ images. The result is a sequence of thousands of new images emerging from each other.
This digital image stream has been modeled and edited by Robi Voigt’s artistic intervention. He has picked out image sequences, dissected them in 3D space, added layers and recombined them. The partially almost imperceptible changes in the AI-generated sequence of images are highlighted and emphasized by the artist using various imaging techniques, reduced speed or zoom. The endless stream of visual data is thus bundled into scenes. As if under a magnifying glass, the viewer can – by means of individual image strands – see into the depths of the AI and observe its „thinkingprocess“ or perhaps even its dreaming.
Robi Voigt has also provided the emerging AI images with new aesthetic inputs using text-to-image models. As a result, the visual world of the AI begins to alterin relation to the source material. The 300° audiovisual installation QUANTUM DREAMS is an animated, ever-changing visual landscape expanding in space. It is accompanied by a soundscape that includes a music track, as well as spoken text generated by a Large Language Model (LLM). This model was trained to comment on and interpret the digital images. The visitors can observe how this interpreting AI approaches the increasingly complex and rich visualworld of the image-generating AI and where the limits of its interpretive ability lie.
QUANTUM DREAMS emerges as a complex interplay between humans and machines. Artists, developers and various AI models work together, for each other, on each other or independently. The roles of the participating artists and machines (AI) are fluid. The artists are the creators of their works, but by releasing them and feeding them into neural networks, they relinquish interpretive authority and control. The machines, on the other hand, are sometimes tools for artistic work, sometimes developers of their own images. Sometimes they learn from analog artworks by a human, sometimes they react with language to the digital creations of another AI. In QUANTUM DREAMS, this dialog between humans and machines becomes the central experience for the visitors. Robi Voigt and Tobias Wursthorn provide an exciting insight into the inner workings of the AI, allowing access to the „subconscious“ of artificial intelligence. Like in a dream, scenes, motifs, colors, shapes and patterns appear, change and disappear again, producing recognizable images or remainingin abstraction. QUANTUM DREAMS is an immersive audiovisual experience that makes human art and digital creativity tangible in the form of a walk-in machine dream.
CONTACT: quantum-dreams@robivoigt.com INSTA: @quantumdreams.robivoigt
TEAM
Robi Voigt
Tobias Wursthorn
Laura Mahlstein
Sophie Stierle
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von:
Kanton Zürich Kultur, Asuera Stiftung, Elisabeth-Weber-Stiftung, Dock18, Okula AG
Zentralwäscherei Zürich, June 3rd – June 13th 2023
Robi Voigt 