LEO ISIKDOGAN ART
Artificial Intelligence + Creative Coding
Artificial Convergent Evolution
This artwork is a visualization of a novel AI-based convergent evolution process that is inspired by convergent evolution in nature. It is a result of an experiment that investigated the aesthetics that emerge when generative models are isolated and then pushed towards each other to converge.
Convergent evolution is a phenomenon in which organisms that are not closely related independently evolve similar traits in response to similar environmental pressures. For example, human eyes and octopus eyes evolved to be similar in structure and function but they were not inherited from a common ancestor. Just like different environmental conditions may cause species to branch off, similar environmental conditions sometimes lead to convergence into a similar appearance despite taking very different paths.
This artwork was created using a custom-designed AI art model that emulated this process: isolation, branching off, and convergence. The model was first trained on a large, generic image dataset. Then, copies of the model were further trained on separate datasets in isolation. Since the copies only saw disjoint sets of data, they evolved to specialize on the limited set of images they observed. After they branched off, the copies were pushed towards each other to converge into similar evolutionary paths.
This novel artificial convergent evolution process helped generative models diverge from their original training sets while converging towards similar aesthetics, resulting in visually distinct and aesthetically pleasing images.
Civilizations of an Exoplanet
Landforms, climates, and natural vegetation have a profound impact on nearly every civilization. Natural forces that shape the geological formations also shape the cultures around them. This artwork explores the role of those forces in the establishment of civilizations in extraterrestrial environments. It is an artistic representation of what human settlements would look like in unfamiliar environments. The work was created using a custom-designed AI art model.
Geodiversity of an Exoplanet
This work explores geodiversity in the context of extraterrestrial environments. It is an artistic representation of Earth-like planetary landscapes we may one day encounter on celestial bodies. The work was created using a custom-designed AI art model and creative algorithms.
Geodiversity of an Exoplanet was shown live at the ‘Off the Chain’, an immersive event organized by Flow Blockchain and Dapper Labs during NFT.NYC with music by DJ Guy Gerber.
Genesis of a Simulated Universe
Artificial intelligence depicts the genesis of a simulated universe. Rendered using creative algorithms and carefully tuned AI art models, this artwork offers a glimpse into the potential of the enormous computing power in posthuman civilizations.
This is the very first NFT minted on a Verisart contract.
An Impressionist’s World
It feels natural to associate certain periods in the past with the type of media used to depict the world in that time. In the 1960s, for instance, television was the dominant medium, and we associate that decade with the black-and-white images of the small screen. In the 1800s, however, the majority of imagery was created using paint and canvas. The world neither looked black and white in the early 1900s, nor like impressionist paintings in the late 1800s. But what if it did? What would the world have looked like in the Impressionist era? This artwork depicts the world as perceived by an impressionist. The artwork was created using an AI-art model trained primarily on impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, as well as works of other prominent impressionist and post-impressionist artists, including Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh.
A Machine’s Dream of Food
Very little is known about how the brain encodes the taste of food and creates the sensation of taste. This work is an artistic attempt to visualize an artificial neural network’s perception of food. It’s a machine’s dream of food it can never taste if you will. The artwork was generated using an AI art model that neither eats nor has an internal representation of what ‘taste’ means. Nevertheless, it seems to have good taste!
A Machine’s Dream of America
What do machines dream about at night in American data centers? They dream about American landscapes! This artwork illustrates an AI art model’s dream about a wide variety of landscapes in the United States, including some of the most surreal views of Hawaii, California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Midwest, and New England.
A Machine’s Dream of Seasons
A machine dreams about seasons it can never experience. This artwork was generated by an AI art model that ran on a server in a windowless, air-conditioned data center. Despite not being able to experience seasons, the model was able to generate images that evoked the beauty and emotional impact of the four seasons.
Diamond City
Diamond City is an AI art rendition of a fictional city in the metaverse, constructed on a decentralized network, running on nodes distributed across the galaxy. The artwork was created using a custom-designed AI art model and creative algorithms.
Raining Pixels
In a city of about a million residents, trillions of pixels are transferred in a second over the internet if not more. As online video consumption increases worldwide, it is raining pixels every second, every minute, and every hour of every day in densely populated areas. This artwork depicts what a literal pixel rain would look like in such a city. It was created using creative algorithms and an AI art model that was exposed to trillions of pixels over the course of its training process.
The World's First 8K 360° AI Landscape Painting
This was my first 8K 360 degree AI art video, and it is the first of its kind in the world to the best of my knowledge. The original video is rendered natively in 8K resolution, not upscaled in post-processing. It is powered by the resolution-independent GAN that I developed earlier this year. The model is able to generate images of arbitrary resolution and aspect ratios, including cylindrical 360-degree videos. Theoretically, there's no limit to the output resolution although resolutions above 8K require workarounds due to memory limitations. The first owner of the NFT received a version of the work in its original 8K (7680 × 3840) resolution.
Forests of an Exoplanet
Planets with an Earth-like biosphere must be very rare in the universe if they exist at all. They must have the right atmosphere, the right amount of light, and the right chemical compounds in the atmosphere. Forests of an Exoplanet depicts what a tiny planet with a flora similar to Earth might look like. It was created using creative algorithms and carefully tuned AI art models. This artwork is the first of its kind to the best of my knowledge.
Surface of an Exoplanet
Our galaxy is full of Earth-sized planets, orbiting Sun-like stars, in the habitable zone. However, none of those exoplanets have been imaged to the level where we could see their surface in detail. This artwork is an AI art impression of the surface of a hypothetical exoplanet. An artificial intelligence art model imagined the details of the surface without seeing any images of exoplanets, with the help of creative algorithms and careful tuning. The model imagined a planet having mountains, valleys, lakes, clouds, multiple suns, and their stunning reflections in the water.
Terrestrial Hallucinations
Terrestrial Hallucinations is an experiment to illustrate an AI art model’s imagination of the geological, chemical, and biological processes that made the Earth hospitable to life. It is an artistic exploration of how an AI might imagine the “origin of life” on Earth. The artwork was created using a custom-designed AI art model, tuned to generate images of hills, rocky landscapes, oceans, and flowers.
Starry Flowers on a Kanagawa Night
Starry Flowers on a Kanagawa Night brings together two pieces of art: The Starry Night by van Gogh and The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. They were made thousands of miles apart yet have strikingly similar visual elements. Perhaps their resemblance was no coincidence. After Japan ended the policy that isolated it from the outside world, Hokusai’s work gained popularity in Europe. Vincent van Gogh himself was a great admirer of Hokusai. This artwork amplifies the visual elements shared between those pieces and sprinkles flowers in between, using a custom AI art model.
Evolution of a City
Just like living organisms, cities have their cycles of life. They rise, mature, and fall. They grow, evolve, and eventually are bound to be abandoned and reclaimed by nature. Evolution of a City is an AI art interpretation of this process. It simulates the evolution of a city over time, from its birth to its abandonment. The artwork was created using a custom-designed and carefully tuned generative model.
Urbanization // Deurbanization
Do we belong in cities? Will there be another ice age? Does nature always reclaim its territory? This artwork is an artistic interpretation of the changing urban and rural landscape due to natural forces and anthropogenic activity.
Moving Life
What would a still life painting look like if we remove the element of 'stillness' from it? Moving Life is an artistic exploration of this question. The artwork illustrates the artist's imagination of an animated still-life painting. It was generated using a custom AI art model that was fine-tuned on thousands of still life paintings.
Heavenly Lava
Volcanoes and lava are traditionally associated with hell in literature. Italian poet Virgil portrayed Lago d'Averno, a volcanic crater lake near Naples, Italy as the entrance to the underworld in his epic poem Aeneid. This artwork explores the opposite direction and illustrates the artist's imagination of what heavenly lava would look like.
Heartbeats of a Flower
If machines could think, what would they think of plants? Would they see them as inanimate objects or as living beings? “Heartbeats of a Flower” is an artistic rendition of the perception of plants through the eyes of a machine. The artwork was created using a neural network that was tasked with generating images of plants that look vibrant and visually appealing. The images were brought to life by a creative use of algorithms.
This work was minted as part of the 8×8: 8 genesis NFTs by 8 major artists working with AI, code and digital technologies in exclusive partnership with Verisart and SuperRare.
SuperRare Editorial: Interview with Leo Isikdogan: Heartbeats of a Flower