Art Collector Pulls Focus with Sam Leach
Summary
TLDRIn this Art Collector Magazine interview, artist Sam Leach discusses his exhibition 'Fully Automatic' at Sullivan and Strom in Sydney. Leach uses machine learning to generate imagery that intersects with art history and contemporary aesthetics. His work explores utopian visions of a post-scarcity society, inspired by 60s architecture and the book 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism'. The process involves curating a dataset of historical and contemporary images, which the algorithm then synthesizes into new compositions. Leach finds the algorithm's output both a framework for his paintings and a source of creative inspiration, leading to a deeper engagement with his art.
Takeaways
- π¨ The artist Sam Leach discusses his work featured in the 'Fully Automatic' exhibition at Sullivan and Stroom in Sydney.
- π€ 'Fully Automatic' is an ironic title, reflecting the use of machine learning to generate imagery, which is part of an art historical and contemporary dialogue.
- ποΈ Sam's practice often draws from art history, contemporary science, and architecture to find aesthetic parallels over time.
- π Machine learning was employed to automate the process of finding aesthetic parallels in image archives, which Sam then translates into paintings.
- ποΈ The artwork 'Beshero and Super Studio' combines elements of Super Studio sofas with people absorbed into them, referencing Boucher paintings.
- π The title 'Fully Automatic' is inspired by Aaron Bastani's book 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism', proposing a utopian vision of a post-work society.
- π Sam is interested in utopian visions of the 60s and 70s, particularly the idea of a luxurious sofa in a post-scarcity society.
- π€ There is a conversation between the algorithm's aesthetics and Sam's preferences, with Sam tweaking the algorithm to steer it in certain directions.
- πΌοΈ The algorithm produces low-resolution images, requiring interpretation and puzzle-solving to translate into a detailed painting.
- π The process has not saved time but has allowed Sam to spend more time painting and less on the Photoshop part of his process.
- π Sam is exploring the possibility of using machine learning to reconcile early colonial Australian landscape paintings with their original scenes, potentially removing colonial filters.
Q & A
What is the title of Sam Leach's exhibition?
-The title of Sam Leach's exhibition is 'Fully Automatic'.
What is the irony in the title 'Fully Automatic'?
-The irony in the title 'Fully Automatic' is that despite the use of machine learning to generate imagery, the process hasn't saved Sam any time in his artistic process.
What is the significance of the painting 'Beshears and Super Studio'?
-The painting 'Beshears and Super Studio' is significant as it is part of Sam Leach's body of work that explores aesthetics across time using machine learning.
How does Sam Leach use machine learning in his art?
-Sam Leach uses machine learning to automate the process of finding aesthetic parallels in art history and contemporary imagery, generating a series of images that he then selects and translates into paintings.
What is the inspiration behind Sam Leach's interest in utopian architecture from the 1960s and 70s?
-Sam Leach's interest in utopian architecture from the 1960s and 70s is inspired by the book 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism' by Aaron Bastani, which proposes a post-work, post-scarcity society powered by AI and automation.
How does Sam Leach's use of machine learning relate to his previous artistic process?
-Sam Leach's use of machine learning allows him to spend less time on the Photoshop part of his process and more time on actual painting, though it also introduces a new challenge of managing databases.
What is the role of the algorithm in Sam Leach's artwork?
-The algorithm in Sam Leach's artwork serves as a tool to process and find aesthetic parallels in a dataset of images, producing a series of images that Sam can then select and use as a basis for his paintings.
How does Sam Leach's artwork reflect the aesthetics of the algorithm?
-Sam Leach's artwork reflects the aesthetics of the algorithm by incorporating elements that the algorithm identifies as aesthetically similar, often resulting in a blend of historical and contemporary visual elements.
What is the original intention behind Sam Leach's use of machine learning in his art?
-The original intention behind Sam Leach's use of machine learning was to predict what his next painting should be, based on the trajectory of his past work, thus reducing the effort in conceptualizing and composing new pieces.
What future projects is Sam Leach considering in relation to his use of machine learning?
-Sam Leach is considering projects that explore the latent space between historical and visual culture, particularly in landscape painting, with the aim of reconciling early colonial Australian landscape paintings and reconstructing the original scenes.
Outlines
π¨ Artistic Integration with Machine Learning
In this segment, Louise Martin Shoe from Art Collector Magazine interviews artist Sam Leach about his exhibition 'Fully Automatic' at Sullivan and Strom in Sydney. The title is derived from Aaron Bastani's book advocating for a post-work, post-scarcity society powered by AI and advanced technologies. Sam discusses his use of machine learning to generate imagery that merges art historical references with contemporary themes, specifically utopian architecture from the 1960s and 70s. The process involves creating a dataset of images, which the machine learning algorithm uses to find aesthetic parallels, producing a series of images from which Sam selects to create his paintings. This approach has allowed Sam to focus more on painting rather than image selection and composition, although it has introduced new challenges in managing databases.
π€ The Algorithmic Art Creation Process
This paragraph delves deeper into Sam Leach's creative process with machine learning. He explains how the algorithm generates low-resolution images that he interprets and translates into his paintings, comparing it to solving a puzzle. Sam discusses the enjoyment he finds in this process and how the algorithm provides a basic compositional framework for his paintings. He also talks about curating his own dataset for the machine learning process, focusing on images that have elements he wants to incorporate into his work. The goal was to predict and automate the creation of his paintings, although it did not entirely achieve this, it opened up new possibilities for exploring the latent space between different areas of history and visual culture.
π Future Projects: Reimagining Australian Landscapes
In the final paragraph, Sam Leach hints at future projects where he intends to explore the latent space between historical and visual culture further, specifically focusing on early colonial Australian landscape paintings. He is interested in using the machine learning process to reconcile these paintings with the original scenes they were inspired by, potentially reconstructing what those scenes might have looked like without the colonial perspective. This approach aims to offer a new way of looking at Australia's early history, removing the colonial filter and offering a fresh perspective on these landscapes.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Fully Automatic
π‘Machine Learning
π‘Aesthetic Parallels
π‘Utopian Architecture
π‘Boucher and Super Studio
π‘Post-Scarcity Society
π‘Data Set
π‘Conceptual Art
π‘Latent Space
π‘Early Colonial Australian Landscape Paintings
Highlights
Sam Leach discusses his exhibition 'Fully Automatic' at Sullivan and Stom in Sydney.
The title 'Fully Automatic' is ironic, reflecting on the use of machine learning in art creation.
Leach's practice combines art historical and contemporary imagery to find aesthetic parallels.
Machine learning automates the process of finding aesthetic parallels in art history and utopian architecture.
The algorithm generates hundreds of images for Leach to select from for his paintings.
The computer algorithm sometimes directly quotes historical paintings, other times it blurs or alludes to shapes and forms.
Leach's work combines elements of Super Studio sofas with figures demonstrating them, absorbed into the sculptures.
The exhibition title is inspired by Aaron Bastani's book 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism'.
Bastani's utopian vision of a post-work society supplied by AI and 3D printing inspires Leach.
Leach is interested in the utopian visions of the 1960s and 70s, especially related to luxurious living.
The algorithm and Leach have a conversation through the process of generating and selecting images.
The process of translating algorithm-generated images into paintings is likened to solving a puzzle.
Leach curates his own collection of images to train the algorithm, ensuring specific aesthetic outcomes.
The original intention was for the algorithm to predict Leach's next painting based on past works.
The algorithm opens up possibilities for exploring the latent space between areas of history and visual culture.
Leach plans to use the process to reconcile early colonial Australian landscape paintings with their original scenes.
The project aims to provide a new perspective on early Australian history, removing the colonial filter.
Leach sees potential in using machine learning to reinvent the past with a futuristic approach.
Transcripts
hello so it's louise martin shoe here
i'm with artist sam
leach for art collector magazine and
we're discussing one of the paintings
that features in his exhibition which
just opened
at sullivan and strom in sydney and the
exhibition's called
fully automatic which is a really ironic
use of the title from what i understand
so i'm speaking to you from outside
brisbane and sam's lockdown
in melbourne hi sam great to see you
hi louise good to see you too so sam in
this
pull focus art collector series we
discuss one particular work
and we've chosen beshear and super
studio which is from 2020
and that's part of this really
interesting body of work in
um exhibited under the title fully
automatic
so um just to go straight to the
question sam
fully automatics an experiment as i
understand it using machine learning
to generate imagery that as i understand
it kind of fits within your own move
but also within an art historical canon
so i'm just going to share this screen
so we can look at this
work and maybe sam you could talk to us
about how we see that manifest in
boucher and super studio
yeah so um basically my
my practice uh has very often drawn on
art historical uh as well as you know
contemporary
scientific and architectural um imagery
to um i guess try and draw out aesthetic
parallels
over time sort of a diacronic approach
to aesthetics and
um you know what i find interesting is
sort of drawing out from the aesthetics
aspects of of culture that are reflected
visually in those
in those elements so the machine
learning was a way
of me um in a sense trying to automate
that
process so normally i spend a lot of
time
going through archives of of images from
various sources and looking for these
for these parallels and trying to
put them together into an image which i
then translate
to a painting but with this i can
basically put together a whole data set
of images
from from art history plus whatever
topic i'm interested in in this case
uh utopian architecture ideas of the
1960s and 70s
and let the let the algorithm let the
the machine learning itself
do that do that processing of finding
the aesthetic parallels and and pulling
it together into an image
and it'll basically produce um a series
of hundreds of images and i can just
sort of scroll through and select from
the ones that i think look interesting
to to generate into a painting which is
which is how we sort of arrive at this
image
so the computer's not really the
algorithm rather is not really
in some instances it's sort of directly
quoting from from the historical
paintings and in some instances it's
sort of more of a
a blurring or a smudging or just an
allusion to a particular
shape or compositional form that that's
appearing
so in this case um it's actually
uh i guess combined elements of
these super studio sofas with the uh
people who are who are sort of
demonstrating them so
there's people that have sort of been
absorbed into these into these
sculptures
uh these sculptural sofas uh as well as
the the form of the sofa itself
um and it's sort of found there's an
allusion to the
boucher paintings which you would find
you know these figures kind of reclining
on clouds floating into the floating
into the sky
um and so it sort of pulls them into you
know to me this quite satisfying
melange of these of these uh factors
so what kind of stimulated the
the ai and you to draw together bushi
and
super studio is it because of your
interest in the 60s
architecture or um yeah well
in particular um with this show
that the title fully automatic comes
from a book by aaron bastani fully
automatic luxury communism
where he's basically proposing a
manifesto for a post-work post-scarcity
society that's being supplied by
artificial intelligence and 3d printing
and
you know automatic robotic processes and
you know i i love this utopian vision
you know his his kind of catchphrase
infinity pools for everyone
and i think yes you know that sounds
that sounds great well you know it's uh
it's communism with champagne i think
this sounds it sounds awesome
so i really so that's why you know i'm
very interested in the utopian visions
of
um of the 60s and 70s you know that kind
of ideal society especially when it
comes to things like a really luxurious
uh sofa that you know you can imagine
just sprawling out in in your in your
post-scarcity life
and the model um and actually um the
model he says for a society that that
is like this in case people are worried
they're going to get bored is really you
know the aristocracy of europe
in the uh you know in the in the
enlightenment period so
those paintings by you know fragonard
and boucher and others
you know that rokoko period really um is
an illustration of this kind of utopian
utopian life so it's a natural it's a
natural combination
to me the other aspect is that when i'm
programming
the uh the algorithm when i'm supplying
it it's it's
if you like drawn to certain uh
graphical images
from the data set and so i kind of i
kind of respond to that and tweak it by
adding images or weighting certain
things slightly differently to
to just steer it in in certain
directions to produce more interesting
results for me
so there's a little bit of a little bit
of a conversation between what the
aesthetics of the algorithm are
if you like and and my own preferences
so that also
is a it comes into play so there's a
conceptual aspect plus
uh you know just what the maths wants to
do and
fully automatic is an ironic title
because this process hasn't really
saved you any time as i understand it
um no yeah that's right yeah it's but i
mean i guess it's uh
i mean it's worked in a way because what
what i wanted to do was
um spend less time on you know really
the
the photoshop part of my process where i
would
buy these images and spend more time in
the actual painting and it's absolutely
done that
um but it does take me a lot longer to
do the paintings
and also i've discovered a whole new
body of work in managing databases so
that's
an exciting development and can you just
step us through what the journey is
between what the computer
kind of generated for you and what we
see
in the image that you've painted
so what what i'm looking at from from
the algorithm it's
it produces uh i guess a a fuzzy
often fairly pixelated image and it's
quite it's quite low resolution so
it's only about um 128 pixels by 128 so
you know really almost thumbnail size so
there's a lot of
um interpreting if you like of what um
you know what's going in between those
pixels when it comes to translating it
to
to a painting but that's actually you
know a really enjoyable part of it
that's like
like figuring out a puzzle where you've
just got these you know these two points
on a canvas that you need to connect
somehow and what
like what is the thing that connects
connects those two so that's been
that's been like a really enjoyable part
of of that process
uh but it's really nice also to have
what this this algorithm is producing
it's like a framework
just the just the basic uh composition
that i can fall back to so when i'm
thinking
well what happens up in this corner i
can just look at this thing on the
algorithm and say okay well
uh you know there's some kind of purple
action happening up there so i'll start
with the purple action and then
uh you know resolve it back so there's
these little hints uh and guides that
i'm getting from the algorithm and then
the rest is
is happening on the canvas while i'm
painting it such an interesting process
because i guess if you're feeding in the
historical canon you've got a lot of
already successful
pictures so do you think this
predisposes it
to produce a successful composition
yeah absolutely it does it does do that
and um you know of course
i'm like i'm in control of what's going
into that data set so a lot of
a lot of what's been happening in this
space with machine learning
is using large publicly available uh
data sets you know taken off off wiki
art or you know celebrity
portraits or things like that but i'm
i'm really you know curating curating my
own collection
that uh that i'm training it on so i'm
quite specific about the images so
not only yes there are paintings that i
consider to be
successful um but they're paintings that
have some element that i want to
um draw from in in producing my own work
um whether that's you know the
conceptual content because i you know i
do always like to
um you know have some fun with the with
the conceptual stuff in the in the works
but also just the just the technical
aspect of the paintings and how that how
they put together the things that i like
to see in there
and did this process meet your original
intention for the painting and for the
project i mean
is this an experiment you'll continue to
work with
oh yeah definitely i mean it's so
there's so much to do with it
um actually the i'll answer the that's
so that's answering the second
part first the first part the original
intention
was to um have a way to uh
predict what my next painting should
should be so
i had this idea that i would basically
turn up in the studio in the morning
um hit enter on the computer and say
okay well today
make this painting you know based on all
the paintings that i've done in the past
it would just look at a trajectory and
make a prediction
and then i wouldn't have to do any of
the hard work of of dealing with
concepts or composition or anything i
just
get a print and i'll color it in and i
thought that that sounds great
so um no it didn't it didn't quite
it didn't quite do that um but that is
still
that is still a project that i'm that
i'm trying to develop
um but it did open you know so many so
many fascinating possibilities
because you know what it's really doing
is exploring this latent space between
various areas of history and various um
aspects of visual culture and it does it
in a way
that i certainly wouldn't do
without the prompt of this of this
algorithm so
it's really giving me a new uh angle
to to look at these these uh you know
these archives that i've been looking at
for some time which
which is something i really enjoy it's
an intriguing project we could talk
about it for um
hours but in the time we've got um is
there anything else that you think
collectors will be interested to hear
about with your upcoming projects sam
well one of the things that i'm i'm
interested in in looking at
in relation to that latent space is
particularly with landscape painting is
looking at
early colonial australian landscape
paintings and
with this process it should be possible
to reconcile
landscape paintings with the imagery
that they're
taken from and then feed back into it
paintings where we don't necessarily
have an image of the original scene
but have it reconstruct what that
actually would have looked like so
um i feel like it's it's a possibility
to give us a new um
a new way of looking at this this early
history of australia and maybe try and
take off some of that colonial filter
that's that's been applied to it
so you're kind of reinventing the past
with the future
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah
um look thank you so much sam's been
really fantastic to speak to you
um and i'm sure all of our viewers would
be really interested to see
fully automatic which is at sullivan and
strength in sydney until the 12th of
september
thank you thank you very much
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