Loss Surface is based on the statistical landscape generated by an AI engaged in the task of visual interpretation. The AI analyses a dataset of images in order to identify and differentiate between different people, animals and objects. The process of optimisation the model employs as it goes about the task of image recognition and classification is captured in the artwork.
The landscape-like 3D graph seen on the surface has been generated from a Resnet 56 image detection model’s performance. Where the model was unsuccessful in its task the loss is high, producing a mountain. Where it was successful a valley appears, representing low loss. This landscape is a frozen moment-in-process in the task of visual perception, realised as a monolithic carved physical relief.
A problem with the encroachment of AI into the classification of the world is that it generates a landscape in which people are alienated. As John Tagg put it, these systems “instantiate a machine regime indifferent to the human ego, eye and body”. The Loss Surface makes visible a landscape which is usually invisible, also investigating the impulse to classify and the act of seeing.
The landscape-like 3D graph seen on the surface has been generated from a Resnet 56 image detection model’s performance. Where the model was unsuccessful in its task the loss is high, producing a mountain. Where it was successful a valley appears, representing low loss. This landscape is a frozen moment-in-process in the task of visual perception, realised as a monolithic carved physical relief.
A problem with the encroachment of AI into the classification of the world is that it generates a landscape in which people are alienated. As John Tagg put it, these systems “instantiate a machine regime indifferent to the human ego, eye and body”. The Loss Surface makes visible a landscape which is usually invisible, also investigating the impulse to classify and the act of seeing.
Half Cheetah is a series of artworks using Reinforcement Learning behaviours generated from quadruped and ‘half cheetah’ models in a 3D space. These behaviours are then transposed onto real human 3D scans and integrated into a real-time environment.
The dm_control model is a self-learning agent which learns to move its body in an ‘imagined’ environment before transferring those movements to physical space. The model is run using similar parameters to commercial robotics and military tests. The performance optimisation process takes days and includes millions of steps, as the model progresses from incapability to competence.
The behaviours from these learning agents are then transposed onto 3D models of humans, whose physical bodies have been scanned, reduced to an efficient file size and the rights sold online, usually to be used in games or advertising. The body motions are adapted where required to fit the human frame.
These combined behavioural elements are then wrapped in a custom-designed real-time dynamic environment, in which a second Machine Learning model is turned inwards to analyse the generated movements. This new model breaks down the linear progression in performance and re-orders motion according to formal aesthetic goals, resulting in a displaced flow of body actions in space.
Half Cheetah demo
The dm_control model is a self-learning agent which learns to move its body in an ‘imagined’ environment before transferring those movements to physical space. The model is run using similar parameters to commercial robotics and military tests. The performance optimisation process takes days and includes millions of steps, as the model progresses from incapability to competence.
The behaviours from these learning agents are then transposed onto 3D models of humans, whose physical bodies have been scanned, reduced to an efficient file size and the rights sold online, usually to be used in games or advertising. The body motions are adapted where required to fit the human frame.
These combined behavioural elements are then wrapped in a custom-designed real-time dynamic environment, in which a second Machine Learning model is turned inwards to analyse the generated movements. This new model breaks down the linear progression in performance and re-orders motion according to formal aesthetic goals, resulting in a displaced flow of body actions in space.
Half Cheetah demo
Mass is a shared 3D interactive space that lives on the blockchain. Everyone shares the same space, but it appears differently to each viewer and changes in unexpected ways over time as a result of the actions of participants.
Mass is a surveillance machine, recording every action its owners take on-chain and communicating them back to the group through changes in the dynamic 3D compositions. But there are bugs deliberately introduced into the code, making the communication of events unreliable. The visual environment and its digital objects are also fragmented.
The artwork brings together a community, but also distances them from each other. It’s a reimagining of our shared online environment, stripped of its agency to direct behaviour. An ever-changing relational structure that overturns the problematic nature of the network it exists within.
More about Mass
Mass is a surveillance machine, recording every action its owners take on-chain and communicating them back to the group through changes in the dynamic 3D compositions. But there are bugs deliberately introduced into the code, making the communication of events unreliable. The visual environment and its digital objects are also fragmented.
The artwork brings together a community, but also distances them from each other. It’s a reimagining of our shared online environment, stripped of its agency to direct behaviour. An ever-changing relational structure that overturns the problematic nature of the network it exists within.
More about Mass
‘Without their market, most NFTs would simply be digital art, like back when people still talked about computer art,
net art and new media art without the blockchain and everyone knew what was meant.
Without the blockchain and its market, MASS by James Bloom could not live.’
Anika Meier
Imagine NFTs Are Alive
net art and new media art without the blockchain and everyone knew what was meant.
Without the blockchain and its market, MASS by James Bloom could not live.’
Anika Meier
Imagine NFTs Are Alive
‘Physicals’ is a series of reliefs carved with a 3-axis CNC router into polyurethane model board. The artworks are based on CAM 3D models constructed on screen.
All the objects appearing in the works are taken from popular online 3D object libraries. These commercially-available internet objects include user interface elements, digitally-constructed painters brushstrokes and 3D primitives.
These separate objects are subjected to multiple processes before being placed together in dimensional compositions and carved into monolithic physical artworks. Each piece is a single presence from a design of many parts.
The artworks follow complex and opaque production processes commonly used for the manufacturing of new and desirable aesthetic objects through appropriation and strategic refinement.