What Androids Dream No. 129

Blind in one eye and unable to see out of the other, the blind antivirus daemon allows a virus to infect the kernel.

What Androids Dream

Formatted for 8K UHD screens, this series was created by collaborating with the artificial intelligence at the heart of the DeepDream project. I input some of my completely abstract images to the software to see what patterns the AI would find in them. The results are the series that I call What Androids Dream. A sort of homage to Philip K Dick, the series anticipates the coming Singularity when even artists may be superseded by machine superintelligence.

Just as photography inspired the cubists and abstract expressionists, what will art generating, super intelligent machines inspire? Perhaps a collaboration between man and machine to find that perfect image?

I find the alien creatures that the AI “finds” to be strangely endearing, like the “hopeful monsters” of the Cambrian explosion — perhaps even an electric sheep or two for Philip K Dick’s android’s private amusement. For me, the images create a mental atmosphere of sci-fi, psychedelic surrealism filled with strange, dreamlike stories.

There seem to be many stories going on in each image — stories that are private and unique to each viewer, stories that are unique to each viewing.