“We are made of the same stuff as dreams,” says Prospero in the Storm of Shakespeare, “and our short life is contained in sleep”. But how are dreams made? For millennia, poets, magicians, thinkers, scientists, philosophers and psychologists have been searching for an answer to this question, each with the tools at their disposal. Multidisciplinary art studio fuse* tries its hand at artificial intelligence and creativity, in an installation called Dreamlike (), born in collaboration with the Laboratory of Psychophysiology of Sleep and Dreams of the University of Bologna. “The laboratory explores creativity and mental activity during sleep, we used their data to analyze and create dream visualizations through artificial intelligence,” explains Mattia Carretti. “We worked with huge datasets, including the dream bank from the University of Bologna and a similar one from the University of California Santa Cruz. Using different machine learning techniques, we looked for correlations between dreams and created multidimensional maps to visualize these connections, thus creating a “dream machine” that transforms them into short films, and allows the viewer to “walk” through these dreams in a sort of audiovisual travel”.
RomeCup 2024, Mattia Carretti: “AI and the dream machine”
How did you start working with artificial intelligence?
“The first project we created using an AI algorithm, in particular GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), is called Artificial Botany and was born in 2019. As a chemist by training, I have always found these figures halfway between science and art fascinating, like the botanists who between 1500 and 1800 studied nature and drew it, representing it in real works of art. Fascinated by this world, we created a series where we collected these large datasets of botanical drawings and generated others. Over time, the project has evolved, and we have also created imaginary scientists who explore that parallel and surreal world of botany: something similar to the Codex Seraphinianus, but using machine learning.”
Stazione Futuro The machine for seeing the dreams of Riccardo Luna 22 March 2024
Is your work more art or science?
“I always try to escape from categories, I have a scientific background, however, like all of us, I am also many other things. For me the boundary between art, science, engineering, design exists the moment you decide to do something that perhaps it has a practical utility and then perhaps it is more design, or it solves a problem and then perhaps it is more engineering. If you do an artistic project, the usefulness is more from an emotional point of view, of inspiration, therefore on the final output and on the purpose, there is probably a difference, but in the process and in the way in which one thinks, in the way in which one creates, curiosity is a characteristic that all these disciplines have in common. Neri Oxman is perhaps the most famous example of this trend , which brings together art, science, engineering, design and shows how these disciplines feed on each other, creating revolutionary works”. Colloquium Brigitta Muntendorf, at the Biennale Musica a work for voices created with the artificial intelligence of Bruno Ruffilli 21 October 2023
Is it technological progress that inspires art or art that seeks new means of expression in technology?
“There is a phrase by Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar, which in my opinion answers this question very well: he says that art challenges technology and technology inspires art. They are two sides of the same coin, sometimes it is the technology itself that suggests new ways to tell stories, other times it is our expressive need that seeks the right technology to realize it.”
David Bowie, talking about how he and Brian Eno used synthesizers in their Berlin trilogy, said he decided not to read the instructions. How much do you need to know about how artificial intelligence works to be able to use it in creative processes like those of fuse*?
“We work in multidisciplinary teams precisely because there is always a need for people who know very well technically what can be done, but it is also important to break the mold: you have to know the rules to be able to break them, especially when it comes to art. When you do something artistic you have to put more than technology, otherwise that aspect that I call soul, feeling, suffering or happiness is missing, in short, everything that is most human. It’s true that when you know how to use the instrument well you can reach a higher level of quality, but in art, in my opinion, you can just ignore everything and improvise.”
Artificial intelligence The camera without a lens that takes “photos” thanks to AI by Andrea Nepori 07 June 2023
Onirica is a surprising work for its aesthetic impact, it amazes and amazes: but is that really the aim of the work of art? Wouldn’t it rather stimulate you to think?
“The idea is to use amazement and wonder as access keys to connect with people through the works, to then communicate something even deeper and more important. For example, with Dreamlike () we wanted to raise questions about our relationship with machines and more generally with technology. We wanted to convey how technology can change the way we relate to ourselves and others. For this reason, together with the artistic project, we have started a dissemination activity on AI, a field where there is a lot of superficiality in the approach and communication. We want to use an artistic opportunity to generate awareness in communities and hope that this revolution, which will radically change our lives, is managed in a more ethical, more sustainable, more conscious way.”
Just a few years ago there was talk of using AI for repetitive and boring tasks: now that generative artificial intelligence is more famous, as creatives do you feel challenged?
“Even if you use AI to draw an illustration, which before perhaps you did by hand, in the end some things remain and will always remain yours. Meanwhile, the initiative, that is, having decided to do a certain thing: artificial intelligence does not voluntarily choose to make a drawing, it has no inspiration, it has no curiosity, it does not feel the innate desire to share something with others. Then the choice. It is you who decides if the result is good, whether to modify it or publish it. But what is interesting about this historical moment is that it will put us in crisis, it will force us to ask ourselves what makes us human, what creativity actually is. Is it simply a technical exercise, or is it choosing that drawing, in that context, to tell that story and convey certain emotions? If you think about it, it’s something similar to what happened with photography: when it was born, many probably thought that there was no point in painting anymore, because reality is replicated much better with photos. Many probably thought that photographers were not actually artists because it was the camera that “generated” the image. Today the painting still exists and at the same time a shot by Ansel Adams, for example, is unanimously recognized as a work of art and Ansel Adams as an artist. Let’s hope Dreamlike () in 10-15 years it will be obsolete, but if it still transmits emotions and messages and if it is still a significant project for people, then it will mean that we have put something more than AI into it.”
What Drake and The Weeknd’s song tells us about the future of music created with artificial intelligence by Bruno Ruffilli April 20, 2023
What is the biggest limitation you have encountered when working with artificial intelligence?
“Right in Dreamlike (), one very difficult thing was overcoming the cognitive biases of the systems we used. The human figures, male and female, are very stereotyped, so by working with the prompts we had to try to get away from these clichés, otherwise the risk was that on a visual level the result would be mediocre, if not downright “stupid”. But these biases are those of our society, we see them in magazines, in advertisements, in films, so we decided to compensate for them only in part, because it can be interesting to trigger doubts in the public, as happened to us”.
So it’s not a technical question, we don’t need more teraflops?
“Jokingly, I could say that for the engineers who work in the studio with me, having more computing power is very important; for me yes and no, in the sense that we can already do many things with what we have, but with more powerful systems we will be able to increase real-time interaction with the public, and then who knows what else. In any case it is not fundamental to what we do, indeed, paradoxically when you have infinite possibilities it is even more difficult to be able to make elegant choices that have meaning and meaning.
Will AI also redefine the relationship between work and spectator?
“We are working on a live version of Dreamlike () with a performer: the visualizations are generated on stage when they are told by the artificial voices, but they are also conditioned by the movement of a body, so the result is different every time, it happens only in that moment and is unrepeatable. For me it is very interesting poetically. When we design an installation, we create different declinations of it in the form of prints, paintings, videos: it is the same concept in various expressive forms. I still like to experience the works live, in collective or individual experiences, in the real, not virtual, world.”
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