=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1907/2_mici_devendorf
|storemode=property
|title=Exploring Unstable AIs for Creative Expansion
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1907/2_mici_devendorf.pdf
|volume=Vol-1907
|authors=Laura Devendorf
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/chi/Devendorf17
}}
==Exploring Unstable AIs for Creative Expansion==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1907/2_mici_devendorf.pdf
Exploring Unstable AIs for
Creative Expansion
Laura Devendorf Abstract
ATLAS Institute & This workshop proposal explores a concept for
Information Science engaging AI in a non-deterministic manner in order to
University of Colorado, Boulder collaboratively produce physical artworks with a digital
laura.devendorf@colorado.edu system. It draws from a lineage of “games” played by
artists, from Surrealists to Situationists, that were
targeted towards automatism and creative exploration
as opposed to the expression of a preconceived idea.
Author Keywords
Creative practice, non-determinism, AI, human-
computer collaboration
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,
HCI): Miscellaneous;
Introduction
Descriptions of creative practices offered by designers,
artists, and crafts people alike often highlight the non-
linear and non-deterministic elements of a creative
practice. For instance, ideas often come from chance
encounters in the everyday world or stem from
accidents. In order to expand their space of ideas and
sensitivities, many artists turn away from a pre-existing
Copyright © 2017 for this paper is held by the author(s). goal or vision and instead, look for ways to work with
Proceedings of MICI 2017: CHI Workshop on Mixed-Initiative Creative
his or her materials (be they digital or physical) in
Interfaces.
open-ended, exploratory ways that may give rise to
unexpected or serendipitous outcomes or “happy practices. On a more specific level, it seeks a mode of
accidents.” In such practices, technology does not engagement with AI that can give rise to surprising and
necessarily need to be enrolled as an assistant or beautiful results.
instrument of productivity. Instead, I have argued that
digital systems for creative practice can be thought of Unstable & Collective AIs
as “translations” [5] —tools that allows creative At the workshop, I would like to present a concept for a
practitioners to experience their idea though a new future MICI or unstable tool that is informed by
symbolic and technical frame, for instance, exploring “games” historically played by artists called AI Reverb.
how a 3D printing can map 3D models to sonic profiles,
or how a machine learning algorithm might see an Artists Games
image [6]. In the role of translator, a computational Artists games are unstable by design and typically bring
system needn’t only “assist” the creative practitioner or multiple creative actors together to produce objects
advance them closer to some predetermined goal state, unique to the situation of production, a form of extreme
but can actively resist the maker, push back, or “break” collaboration where “players” correspond in an open
their ideas in ways that may reveal new creative field of creative possibility. For instance, Surrealist
potentials. As such, engaging the concept of translation artists created several games for generating artwork
in design leads to tools that are unstable in the sense automatically and in a stream of consciousness fashion,
that they preserve risk and unpredictability. These “Solitary and collective automatic techniques, and the
unstable tools are to be used for inspiration, providing exploitation of chance are central to many surrealist
the maker with a new way of seeing or understanding games…automatic techniques may be used as a
their particular object of inquiry that they can take up beginning of a creative activity, to stimulate and
and fold into their practice in whatever way they encourage spontaneity of utterance or image-making”
choose [3,4]. [1]. The most famous of these games is “exquisite
corpse,” a procedural game in which one artists draw a
While I have studied AI and computer science formally, head, hides what he or she draws, and invites another
I have yet to engage advanced algorithmic techniques to fill in the remaining body and legs. The result is an
in the unstable prototypes that I have created to date. I outcome that neither artist could plan or anticipate. It
used to see these advanced algorithms as mechanisms is an artistic product born from a collective, creative
that reduced engagement in the physical world, or intelligence.
eliminated the “risk” that I and others find so valuable
in a creative practice. I would like to attend this Led by the writings of Guy Debord, The Situationist
workshop to explore alternative engagements of AI and International extended surrealist games into the ream
machine learning in what I have be calling “unstable of everyday life, developing tactics for engaging the
tools,” thus, unstable AI’s. At a broad level, this project everyday that could denature the habitual and lead to
joins wider calls for exploring where technology can experiences to allow someone to see beyond spectacle
participate within non-linear and chance-based creative [2]. As such, these games turned away from a concrete
artistic product and into a mode of sensitizing the understanding as opposed to a particular creative
player. Furthermore, they fused games with life, “object” outcome.
suggesting ludic engagements in everyday space. Such
themes resonate through related art movements, like AI Reverb: Fusing AI and Artists’ Games
the chance inspired “event scores” of Fluxus artists Drawing from this lineage of artists’ games or event
Yoko Ono [7] and La Monte Young [8] which prompt scores, I imagine a system called AI Reverb that
aesthetic engagements in the more mundane prompts an artist to take action in response to
happenings of the everyday. For instance, one of Ono’s directives supplied by an artificial intelligence agent. In
event scores, entitled Tunafish Sandwich Piece, keeping with my interest in engaging with the everyday
requires its viewers/actors to: and materials, I imagine a system composed of a
camera and text output screen. The camera captures
Imagine one thousand suns in the the present scene, say, the maker sketching on a piece
sky at the same time. of paper. That scene (i.e. the paper) is processed as
Let them shine for one hour. input to an AI that classifies what the object that the
Then, let them gradually melt into maker is drawing (much like Google’s Quick Draw
the sky. application 1.) Based on how the AI identifies the
Make one tunafish sandwich and eat. [7] object (for instance, if it thinks the artist is drawing a
cat), it can supply instructions for the maker to perform
Ono’s event score fuses poetry with practice, creating a on the drawing (e.g. draw multiple tails on cat, throw
prompt for a sensory engagement in sun and away drawing of cat and draw a dog instead, etc.). As
sandwiches alike. The goal of the work is less oriented the artist performs the command, the drawing changes,
around a “thing” produced, and more focused on how the classification of the drawing changes and a new set
the execution of the instructions shaped the person of commands is born ad infinitum. The outcome of such
who executed them. a system represents a reverberation between an artist
and a machine, a surrealist drawing born out of a
While each example is targeted towards different collective human-machine intelligence.
outcomes and audiences, whether it be an
automatically generating thing, a critique of spectacle, In AI Reverb accuracy and the correctness no longer
or an attempt at anti-art, they share in common a function as meaningful bounds for the design space of
vision of making where control extends beyond an interaction. Like a game of telephone, the pleasure
individual maker or audience. They position the artist emerges from the moments in which the AI makes an
as one of many numbers of forces capable of producing incorrect prediction or works in an imperfect manner.
creative work, not necessarily the individual who stands And while I have illustrated the concept within the
above controlling what is produced. As such, these relatively simplistic realm of drawing, one could
games tend to be oriented towards sensitization and
1
https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/
Figure 1: A concept sketch for AI embraced everyday life. For instance, an AI agent that
Reverb demonstrating feedback feeds back on signage in shop windows and billboards
between human doing sketching, in order to direct artists to take different actions within
AI interpreting sketches in public space.
progress and offering instructions
for human to interpret.
The tension with a project AI Reverb this is
differentiating between a system that “breaks” well and
a system that is just plain broken. At the present
concept stage, I cannot predict exactly where those
lines will be drawn. I see the sketch provided here as a
benchmark for a new way of thinking about AI more
than a set of plans for a system that I plan to enact.
One of my goals for the workshop, then, is to refine
this direction, learn more about the tools and
techniques available, and hopefully gather feedback
from artists in the group about how such a system
might adapt into exploratory phases of their own
practice.
References
1. Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding. 1995. A Book of
Surrealist Games. Shambhala, Boston.
2. Guy Debord. 2000. Society Of The Spectacle. Black
& Red, Detroit.
3. Laura Devendorf. 2016. Strange and Unstable
Fabrication.
4. Laura Devendorf, Abigail De Kosnik, Kate Mattingly,
and Kimiko Ryokai. 2016. Probing the Potential of
Post-Anthropocentric 3D Printing. In Proceedings of
the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive
Systems (DIS ’16), 170–181.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901879
5. Laura Devendorf and Kimiko Ryokai. 2015. Being
the Machine: Reconfiguring Agency and Control in
Hybrid Fabrication. In Proceedings of the 33rd
Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in
imagine a mode of AI reverb that more readily
Computing Systems (CHI ’15), 2477–2486.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702547
6. Lucian Leahu. 2016. Ontological Surprises: A
Relational Perspective on Machine Learning. In
Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on
Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’16), 182–186.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901840
7. Yoko Ono and John Lennon. 2000. Grapefruit: A
Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono.
Simon & Schuster, New York.
8. La Monte Young (ed.). 1963. An Anthology of
Chance Operations. La Monte Young & Jackson Mac
Low.