Evolution

Evolution is a video installation which shows a Machine Learning neural network creating the SAGAN portraits Man #1, Woman #1, and Man #2.

The neural network is fed 800 photographs of the subject and is tasked with creating a photograph that looks like one of the 800. Each frame of Evolution is an actual output frame from the neural network, and this trail of output documents the learning process. When the output is played back, the resulting animation is reminiscent of Eadweard Muybridge’s early photographic motion studies.

Evolution was displayed in the exhibition When Light Becomes Form: Processing Photography at the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University in Feb-Mar, 2022.

Program length: 12 min.