Ai-Da: Portrait of the Robot

Fascinating small exhibition at the Design Museum on the art robot Ai-Da.

Named after Ada Lovelace, the computer pioneer, Ai-Da can sketch faces and talk to her models. I have read quite a bit about this phenomena but sadly Ai-Da wasn’t in the show. It did however explain how cameras in her eyes use facial recognition to scan faces then enable a robotic arm to draw in a fragmentary style. It then went explained how she reaction with people based on AI learned language and gestures.

There was another section on how worked with her to design a font based on her discussions with a designer and her copying of the Arial font. I’ve not sure I fully understand but it seemed very clever.

Closes 29 August 2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Renaissance Nude

Image
Beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the nude in Renaissance art. The show was gently themed but mainly let the pictures speak for themselves. It began by looking at the subjects, both religious and secular, which include nude figures then examined techniques and models used in these works, finishing by looking at more personal pictures. This is a period I’ve studied a lot so there were a lot of old friends and it was quite fun predicting what might appear. There were a few surprises too such as the rather surprising drawing of the Ecstatic Christ. I liked the fact the show included lots of different art forms not just paintings including sculpture, etchings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. There were some fascinating hangs to draw comparisons particularly two sets of pictures by Giovanni Bellini and Hand Memling from almost exactly the same date. These were shown back to back in a display cabinet down the middle of one room. My favourite work was ...
Read more

Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Exhibition 2019

Image
Delightful exhibition at Clarendon Fine Art showing pictures from the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year TV series. I had loved the series which had set nine artists, both professional and amateur, to paint one of three celebrities. It then had a semi-final and final with them all looking at one sitter and in the final they also took on a commission. I loved the way you watched a picture build and how some were then made or spoiled by one stroke of paint.   Finding these pictures I knew so well in the flesh was therefore fascinating. None of them disappointed. My favourite artist from the final, Tom Mead, works looked just as good in real life if not better as you could see the detail. The show included his impressive self-portrait which he submitted to enter the competition, a wonderful fragmented picture of his reflection in a mirror giving a sense of movement. I loved that it included a large version of him and a miniature. His commission for the final of Jazzie B...
Read more

Great Escapes : Remarkable Second World War Captives

Image
Moving exhibition at the National Archives looking at prisoners of war and internees in the Second World War. OK I admit I cried three times in this show and I’m not a crier! It gave a good overview of the history from military prisoners of war and civil internees on all sides but the guts of the show were the short biographies with artefacts which brought to life the voices from the past. I’d come partly because Airey Neave, who escaped from Colditz, was my MP as a child and his was the first biography I read in the show so I was hooked from the start. Also a friend of my mother’s lived with Mum’s family after the war when her parents returned to Singapore to pick up the pieces of their pre-war life there. They had escaped on one of the last boats out of the city. OK tears no 1 was the story of Gladys Skillet who was deported from Guernsey to Germany and gave birth in a German hospital next to a German lady, Maria Koch, who befriended her and they remained friends throughout th...
Read more