As part of the public programme supporting the exhibition NEW ELEMENTS, the artist Anna Ridler will talk about her creative experience with machine learning and give an overview of how generative adversarial networks work. She will explore the creative potential of datasets as a way of working and how AI can work not only as a tool but as a way of exploring concepts, focussing on her works The Shell Record and Proof of Work.
The Shell Record is a dataset of shells the artist gathered from the foreshore of the River Thames in early 2021 and, at the same time, moving image pieces created by a generative adversarial network that had been specifically trained on this imagery. The work explores ideas around collecting, assigning value and using shells to trade with links to the history of shells being used as one of the earliest forms of currency. The Shell Record also draws a parallel with modern digital technology and NFT, whose value is determined by a similar principle by those who agree with it. Anna not only collected rare shells from the Thames, but also permanently recorded these analogue data carriers in the digital structures of the blockchain, thereby noting the similarities between technology and nature.
- When: December 1, 2021 at 5:30 pm (Moscow time)
- Where: Online. Please register to receive the link.
The event takes place with the support of the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy in Moscow within the international UK – Russia Creative Bridge programme 2021-2022.
About the speaker
Anna Ridler is an artist and researcher who works with systems of knowledge. She explores how technologies are created to get a better understanding of the world. She is particularly interested in ideas around measurement and quantification and how this relates to the natural world. She often works with datasets, creating new and unusual narratives.
Ridler holds an MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art and a BA in English Literature and Language from Oxford University along with fellowships at the Creative Computing Institute at UAL. Her work has been exhibited at cultural institutions worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, HeK Basel, the ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, Sheffield Documentary Festival and the Leverhulme Centre for Future Intelligence. She was a European Union EMAP fellow and the winner of the 2018-2019 DARE Art Prize. Ridler has received commissions from Salford University, the Photographers Gallery, Opera North, and Impakt Festival.
Artnet listed Ridler as one of the nine “pioneering artists” who explored AI’s creative potential. IN 2019 she received an honorary mention by Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for the category “AI & Life Art”.