Ai-Da, the robot-artist in Venice with portraits and works inspired by Dante

by time news

Invasion of the body snatchers at the Venice Biennale: Ai-Da arrives, the robot-artist with humanoid features and mechanical arms (she has dealt with her several times “reading”). Now the cyborg-painter has evolved: she is capable of compose live portraits in color thanks to a new prosthesis based on robotics and advanced algorithms. And Ai-Da, during the inaugural week of the Biennale, will show off his new skills in public by painting four portraits live.

“I am inspired by Yoko Ono, Michelangelo, Kandinsky», She declares with her unmistakable metallic voice during the presentation which took place yesterday at the British Library in London. But she says she also refers to “literature: Dante, Orwell, Aldous Huxley“. She and she are excited to go to Venice: “It’s a lovely, wonderful place, an environment that I really like.”

His is the first solo exhibition of a robot-artist ever presented among the collateral events of the Biennale: Ai-Da will exhibit at the European Council of Art with an exhibition entitled Jumping into the Metaverse, a reflection on humanity and Artificial Intelligence that extensively re-elaborates Dante’s echoes. The first installation is Flowers on the banks of Lethe, created with 3D printed flowers based on Ai-Da’s sketches; it then continues through other references to Divine Comedywith a hologram of Ai-Da with a face turned backwards (like the fortune tellers in Purgatory), up to the self-portraits with sewn eyes that repeat the fate of the envious.

Ai-Da is itself a performance, beyond the works it creates: and it wants to be a reflection – and a warning – on the challenges that technology, especially Artificial Intelligence, launches to humanity. But its existence raises questions about the nature of art: «Ai-Da is able to imitate it in the most profound way – says Aidan Meller, its creator -. AND as close as there is to being a human artist, is the most advanced imitation of what an artist can be ». But Meller fails to describe his works as “art”: “I leave it to you to decide.”

Ai-Da owes its name to a tribute to Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron who was the pioneer of modern computer science: after her debut in 2019 in Oxford, she has traveled the world, even managing to get arrested in Egypt as a suspected British spy. But now the Biennale should give it a very different welcome.

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