Synthetic Dystopia

人工合成废托邦
Machine learning artworks & visual experiments
Category
Machine Learning
Location
New York, Us
YEAR
2022/05

Statement

Synthetic Dystopia is a series of Machine learning artworks and visual experiments based around the theme of urbicide. The project attempts to restore our estranged knowledge of urbicide, and challenge our generation to re-sensitize our perspective on urban destructions, by visualizing urban decays through a series of speculative digital artworks using machine learning algorithms.

My Contribution

Credit

Project Purpose

Urbicide >

Urbicide means "violence against the city". The most obvious form of urbicide is the violence upon the city fabric, namely the physical destruction and demolition of the city and its architecture. Over the years, the term urbicide continues to evolve in broader terms. The destruction of urban foundation and urban life would be the destruction of a heterogeneous collection of identities, beliefs, traditions, cultures, and memories of its inhabitants.

Emotional Desensitization >

Desensitization to violence is a form of habituation that results in a diminished negative response and sentiments to violence, after repeated exposure to violence through digital media.

People increasingly become indifferent to war and destruction in urban settings or even develop adhesive emotions. Instead of preventing further destruction and violence, a copious amount of communities either deliberately or indirectly increase the tension between the adversaries in such situations, and sometimes even provoke new forms of hostility, thereby creating a vicious cycle of urbicidal violence.

Machine Learning >

There are two reasons why I am using machine learning as the approach to create artworks:

First, I am using AI as a tool or medium for creative production. Machine learning could be considered as a toolkit that facilitates image generation, animation, and manipulation. The process could be thought of as a human artist collaborating with AI assistants.

Second, I believe AI has an abstract representation and symbolic meaning in the theme of urbicide. For this project, I have created a fictional context where AI is the artist or the dreamer. In other words, I am using the lens of a fictional AGI to understand urbicide.

Overview >_

The Decay Converter converts an interior space into its decayed form. The converter is capable of producing the ongoing, intermediate stage of decay, and projected destruction in the future, based on the input of the predecay image, and vice versa. It is a combination of the current decay that is happening and projected destruction in the future. The set of generated images aims to impart a sense of distress and imminence to the audience, by prophecizing the outcome of our surroundings in a state of urban decay.

Overview >.

The Decay Converter is presented as a data sculpture or data painting. Ideally, It would be a digital frame or a projection mapping installation set in the room of where the decay is generated. The use of particle systems is an analogy for machine learning art. Since each pixel of a generated image represents apiece of data in a ML model, it is constantly transforming, twisting, turning, and pushing into infinity, just like a particle in a vast and turmoil structure.

Technical Detail >

Model: MUNIT (Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation)/Cycle GAN

Program: Colab Notebook by Derrick Schultz, Unity Audio Reactive VFX (inspired by Yuma Yanagisawa

Dataset: 3343 images of interior space, 3890 images of decayed space

Dataset Source: 4750 from Flicker, 2283 from Google, 200 from my own albums

Image Gallery

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decayed example (ITP classroom) >

Before

After

decayed example (CApstone presentation room) >

Before

After

decay converter data sculpture >

Act II : TImeline (evolution and extinction) of human architecture

Machine Generated Architectural Sketches >

Overview >_

The project utilizes a fictional context from the perspective of an extraordinary artificial intelligence, set in the future, where humans ceased to exist. As the last conscious being in the long dilapidated cities, the AI is dreaming about the past ,contemplating the anti-climactic finale of human civilization. The AI is reminiscing on the violence that once took place, the indifference that it witnessed, and lamenting the cultural decay and loss of humanity.

Overview >.

The series of ML artwork are architectural sketches in the style of scientific illustration. These timelines are the impressions of how the machines study humans’ past, though these generated illustrations like the ones we see in encyclopedias or anatomy books.

Technical Detail >

Model: StyleGan2 ADA, StyleClip, Disco Diffusion

Program: StyleGan2 ADA PyTorch Colab, Notebook by Derrick Schulz, StyleClip (StyleGan3 + CLIP) Colab Notebook by  nshepperd, Disco Diffusion v5.2 Colab Notebook by Katherine Crowson

Dataset: 570 processed architectural sketches

Dataset Source: @jlron, @yann.leroy, @i_am_yeono, @its_leepd, @maxiaowei_artist

Image Gallery

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"Archisketch" (custom trained styelgan model) >

Latent space linear interpolation (z:0.8) >

Truncation Interpolation (ψ=0.8-2.8, seed 470) >

Timeline of human architecture >

Timeline of human architecture (causes of urbicide) >

Act III: ML Art

artificial nightmares 4K >

Experimenting with PYTTI TOOl's 3D Animation

Overview >_

Act III of Synthetic Dystopia incorporates collections of ML artworks in either image or animation format. The image collection consists of two styles of artwork:

1. Graphic depictions of imageries of the decayed urban environment.
2. Abstract representations and symbols for the deep irony in the false grandiosity of the human civilization and its silent decay.

Technical Detail >

Model: Disco Diffusion, PYTTI Tools

Program: Disco Diffusion v5.2 Colab Notebook by Katherine Crowson, PYTTI Colab Notebook by sportsracer48

Image Gallery

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Urbicide (Pink Floyd - Speak To Me / Breathe) 4K >

Experimenting with Disco Diffusion 3D Animation
Inspired by HuemanInstrumenti

The Hollow men (T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men) 4K >

Stroyboard & experimentations

Explaination

The ML animation The Hollow Men was based on T. S. Eliot’s poem of the same name. The “stuffed men” in the poem allude to the indifferent common folks, like scarecrows, with motions following the wind. I used the imageries of” stuffed men” from the poem to symbolize the people who echo others’ words, who fear speaking the truth, and in turn, preserve the emotional desensitization cycle.

Explaination

Several pieces of my work depict crowds of people, not in commotion but in acquiescence, as the city in the background burns and explodes and blood spills and all kinds of atrocities resume. This matches the end of the poem as the poet predicts: As the emotional desensitization grows and the crowd of indifferent people amass, and becomes a “kingdom”, then “the world would end not in a bang but in a whimper”.

Image Gallery

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Final Video

Synthetic Dystopia VR Virtual Gallery >

Unreal Engine RealTime Gameplay >