Content Aware Studies

‘Content Aware Studies’ explores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to reconstruct and generate lost historical artefacts from Greek and Roman history. In the era of ubiquitous computation, how might methods involving data, AI, ML and other forms of automation turn into semi- or quasi-archeological knowledge production, interpreting our history and culture?

In ‘Content Aware Studies,’ an algorithm capable of self-learning analyzes 3D scans of sculptures and friezes in an effort to replenish lost fragments. Based on its analysis of the scans, the algorithm generates fragment models which are then 3D printed in various materials and used to fill the voids of the original sculptures and their copies.

Some of these algorithmic outputs are turned into new machine-fabricated sculptures, uncanny in their algorithmic integrity. They render the work of synthetic agency that lends a faithful authenticity to the forms, while also producing bizarre errors and algorithmic normalizations of forms previously standardized and regulated by the canon of Hellenistic and Roman art.

Title: Content Aware Studies

Artist: Egor Kraft

Medium: sculpture and single-channel AI generated video

Year: 2019

Location: On display at Pedion tou Areos

Glossary: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Algorithm