static. is an interactive artwork that explores the friction between old/new, analog/digital, and human/AI. The work invites its viewers to play around with its generative properties, revealing its unfiltered interpretation of you. The original version of the work (v1.0) was developed as part of a case study on the IIA4XAI framework that was proposed in Marise's Graduation Thesis for the MSc Media Technology. The work was developed and used for user tests in the Robot Lab at the Snellius Building of Leiden University in April 2023.
static. v1.0 consisted of seven stacked old CRT television sets, with six facing the front and one facing the back. The television set at the back was connected to a camera that pointed at a blank white wall, displaying the camera’s input. Participants were invited to position themselves between the white wall and the camera, generating the input image that triggered the image generation process. The use of the participant’s own face as input for the system allows for a personalized experience and helps to build engagement between the participant and the installation. The camera input was processed using an adapted version of the CLIP Interrogator 2.1 model which generated a prompt based on the participant’s image. This prompt was then used as input for a Stable Diffusion-based pipeline, resulting in the generation of five completely unique images. Each television displayed a different generated image, looping through the various stages of the generation process, from the initial noise to the final result. As participants moved closer, they could observe the evolution of each image, gaining insight into the AI generation process. Once all five images were generated and displayed on the front televisions, the prompt that had been used for generation appeared on the larger television set positioned at the bottom of the installation. This prompt served as a textual representation, or explanation, of the participant’s image and provided insights into the link between their own image and the generated results.
In September 2023, a simplified version of static., or static v1.1 was developed for the Critters Expo, as part of the Days of Art and Science and Nacht van Ontdekkingen in Leiden. static v1.1 is a stripped-down version of the original work, consisting of only 2 CRT television sets that was running non-stop for the full duration of the exposition on September 14, 15, and 16.
