AI in arts and culture

Abstract

What comes to your mind when you hear the word, Ai? Let me guess, self-driving cars, chatbots and some other cool sci-fi stuff, right?

But Ai is not limited to it, for the last few years it has and is continuously expanding exponentially in various fields and one of such fields is Art and culture.

Introduction

If we have a closer look on the history of mankind, we’ll find that art and culture were always there and were evolving as the human civilizations evolved, and now in this modern 21st century digital era where almost everything is impacted by the use of computers and artificial intelligence, the field of art and culture is also not far behind.

The advances in new technologies and in particular Ai, have led to greater possibilities in artistic experiences and is continuously transforming the art and people’s experiences with it, while preserving it and making it more accessible at the same time.

Ai is playing a significant role in creative processes art, architecture, music, etc.

For example, museums and art galleries are using AI to provide more and deep engagement to their visitors individually.

Developments in the field of Ai and arts

The companies who are working for the development and advancement of Ai are also investing in the development of Ai for art and culture. In 2019 July, Microsoft announced a $125 million investment for its new pillar of Ai for good portfolio. It will emphasize on development of Ai for cultural heritage by working with non–profits, universities, and governments to help preserve culture, language, artifacts, etc.

The use and advancement of Ai in art and culture has given rise to computational creativity. It refers to the study and creation of software that tries to mimic creativity that of a human. These softwares are used for automated artistic tasks such as painting, writing poems, composing music, etc. based on data fed into them. These softwares can also act as helping hand to artists and collaborate in their work instead of being a mere tool. Computational creativity is still a subject for debate because we are still skeptical about how a machine can stimulate human artistic and creative techniques. But as it is hopefully evident from the examples above, machines can do artistic works and will definitely improve in near future.

Creativity is mysterious because it’s something we cannot easily explain, like sometimes it’s just inspiration and intuition and we are generally not conscious about how a creative idea came to us. It’s something we cannot scientifically explain or provide a reason for. But if we think deeply, we’ll find the new ideas or thoughts that arise in our mind are not completely new. They are generally based on or are results of our past experiences and knowledge and were already there in our mind.

That’s exactly how an Ai model works, i.e., predicting or providing results based on historical data fed into the system and analyzed and processed according to a certain algorithm.

How it works?

Here are some examples of how Ai is enriching our art and culture:

Data analysis:

Museums and galleries generally have huge amount of data about artefacts and their history. The storage and translation of such huge amount of data is a challenge.

The use of Ai helps in easy analysis and linking of data, so that it can be used for various purposes like identification, language translation and to draw connection between them.

AI for art restoration:

Many museums have old artefacts, archives of images, photos, and videos that are damaged and require restoration. AI can be used to restore them based on existing data. For example, a restoration of an early 20th century image can be done based on existing data of what colors would have been in 1910 or 1920.

AI for art:

Today robots are creating paintings, sketch based on data fed into them. In 2018, the first ever Ai created art was sold by French art collective obvious, which has resulted in a craze for ai artwork among collectors.

Now, as the museums are also continuously adapting to Ai created artworks, we may soon find them collecting and storing ai art.

Virtual visits:

The historical buildings and museums are of great importance with respect to tourism and attract millions of tourists every year. But not everyone is able to visit them and has only seen pictures.

The use of ai is now changing this scenario, many Ai industry key players including Microsoft are working on bringing the experience of a tourist’s eye to our computers using Ai and drones to create 3d models.

Open access:

Many museums and galleries are making their data and collection available online to everyone. The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its open access in 2017, making all images and data relating to public-domain artworks in its vast collection available to everyone online. They are also working to take this initiative to the next level, using artificial intelligence to explore new ways for global audiences to discover, learn and create with one of the world’s foremost art collections.

Language Preservation:

There are more than 7,000 languages in the world and some languages from them have a very few speakers of it. Microsoft and other companies are working on preservation of language spoken in a region by using Ai.

Interpreting expressions:

Some paintings like that of Mona Lisa have enigmatic expressions which are translated by people according to their knowledge of art, but researchers in Japan are working on eradication of this issue using facial recognition to find out what a painter or artist was thinking while creating it.

Robot writers:

In 2019, OpenAI developed an algorithm which can write like a human. The writing was indistinguishable from that of human being. After that many other companies also developed and some are still working of similar projects and are trying to minimize the risk of malicious applications of this technology.

Ai has also been used to write a travel novel by linking it to computer hooked GPS, camera and microphone

Conclusion

Ai is definitely a great tool and is being widely used in every field including art and culture. It has improved our experiences with art and is also being utilized in creation of art. But as we know Ai works on the historical data fed into it, hence we must make sure that the data is correct and unbiased in order to gain better results.