Exhibited as part of Plásmata II: Ioannina, Filmgate Interactive at the Perez Art Museum Miami, and Digital Art Fest İstanbul at the Atatürk Cultural Center

“Parallels” is a site-specific, responsive machine-learning installation, which transforms a large LED wall into a portal for visitors to meet the world and themselves through the lens of a neural network. The work enables a visceral and unmediated experience of the way in which machine vision discerns the environment through live digital decoding of a changing landscape, dreaming and reframing it in a constant conversation with those who encounter it.

The installation particularly seeks to recontextualize emerging machine learning technologies in the natural landscape, questioning how new forms of artificial knowledge are changing our perception of the world around us. The installation thus draws the sphere of generative AI into conversation with the landscape and the historical embeddedness of the viewer. How do we look when reimagined by statistical alchemy unleashed on the collective legacy of billions of online images?

“Parallels” was first conceived as part of Plásmata II for the Onassis Foundation and consisted of a large LED wall along the Ioaninna promenade with a view across Lake Pamvotis in Greece. A camera mounted behind it captured the vista and created a seamless live digital rendition of the scene as construed through a variety of generative AI models. This parallel view of the world was influenced by input provided by the audience passing in front of the camera as well as other environmental factors like light and sound levels.

Parallels was most recently shown at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and Frost Science Museum as part of the Filmgate Miami Immersive Festival where it won the Best of Tech award for its innovative use of generative machine learning tools. The aesthetics of the installation were adapted to the locality in order to reimagine these cultural institutions and the surrounding urban landscape through the eyes of a neural network. Each activation of Parallels is site specific, with the visual styles reflecting the cultural and historical context of its environment.

Created by Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser