AI and art _ How artificial intelligence inspires creativity

[08:43 - 09:59]

An excerpt from the conversation, which can be heard in full here.

Moritz:

I was at the Radialsystem in Berlin, a dance culture venue, just before Christmas. I saw something interesting there: Nico and the Navigators is the name of an independent theatre group that often performs there. It was a musical theatre dance piece with AI, which took place there, and I'll show you a video of someone dancing [video clip].

Friederike:

So you see a person dancing and in the background there's a projection of a person who first looked like Hitler and then looked like...

Moritz:

I think that was Marine Le Pen...

Friederike:

...and this figure in the background imitates the movements of the dancer on stage. 

Moritz:

But that's live, meaning someone is dancing in front and it's recognised by AI and then transformed into something else. I talked to the creators again and learned that it's called Stream Diffusion, an open source AI model, and then the people are transformed into someone else. It was impressive to see how it changed immediately in a photo-morph-like way, and you could try it out for yourself in the next room. You could write in, ‘I want to be a cow’ or ‘I want to be Michael Jackson,’ and then you saw a mirror image of yourself – it was a fun gimmick, and of course there could be much more to it than just symbolism.