Afrofuturist Portraits Created with Deep Dream Algorithms | Hacker News Reader

Afrofuturist Portraits Created with Deep Dream Algorithms

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30 pointsKroeler14 comments

Folks are tripping over the term "Afrofuturist" here in the comments.

Pretend this was an article about music, and the title was "Stunning Electronic Music Created with [...]". Would you object to the term "Electronic"? It's a specification of genre, and there's no harm in that specificity.

This case is no different — "Afrofuturist" is a style of art, and there's no harm in being specific about the style of art.

If there's anything harmful here, it's the rapidity with which folks jump straight to criticism due to perceived "racial spin" and "buzzwords".

There doesn't need to be something new here in the "technological sense" for this link to be interesting. Hacker News is often interesting for linking to and discussing the intersection of technology and society. So, gang, let's not disregard the human-facing aspect of the story. Here are some examples of interesting things about this story we can talk about:

* How does this artwork advance the discussion around the relationship between AI and race? (This is a very hot, very interesting area of discussion, now that we've seen the consequences of racially-biased training data producing racially-biased applications of AI)

* How does this artwork, and its use of the technology, interact with other Afrofuturist artwork, and its use of technology?

* Let's wonder about what sort of Deep Dream artwork you could create using training sets based on race, and what sort of an interesting artist statement you could make pursuing such a project.

* Ignoring the race angle for a minute (since, after all, this is still under the umbrella of "cool artwork made with AI"), does anyone have any insight on whether you can create music using something like Deep Dream?

I'm amazed at the pushback over "Afrofuturist", the term has been around for decades and is an important theme in science fiction and pop music (think Janelle Monáe), let alone Black Panther:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism

Sun Ra!

EXACTAMUNDO.

I don't know if it's what you had in mind (re: music), but perhaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_music

Thanks for the link. I make a lot of generative / procedural / algorithmic music, but not using any AI tech. I've looked at some works created with various AI / ML approaches, but they all feel a bit like Markov mush. I haven't heard anything that has the same kind of compositional "surreality" (for lack of a more precise term) that Deep Dream images have.

Very much non-news article in my opinion. I don't see anything new here in the image restyling processes or anything unique - it's just applying existing algos with a racial spin.

They are pretty pictures to look at, it'd be nice if this article was just titled Stunning Portraits Created with Deep Dream Algorithms... it might be nice to get a better delve into the actual techniques used, but I always appreciate seeing art and technology melded together in neat ways.

Afrofuturist? Desperate use of buzzwords in the article, as the title would suggest. Race is throw in there but adds nothing to it (it rarely ever does). Nothing really new in the technological sense.

Non-news to me.

I sortof agree with your oppinion. This reminds me of the early days of photoshop. I remember the art photoshop art around then,packed with tons of filters and distortions,etc. Nowadays AI takes credit for it

In fact, “futurism” is contributing nothing either.

Flag it if you hate it.

What is the correct terminology for the binary blob that is a result of training? Is that resultant blob called “the algorithm?” I see people use the word algorithm to describe the training and the actual result of the training. I think the most appropriate term for the resultant blob is “agent” or something like that.

I believe I've heard it referred to as a "model".

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