Installatie: Poe-m

Creativity is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. AI starts to become better and better and machines start to meet some of the definitions of creativity. They create original art pieces, poems, and movie scripts, but also are able to play chess and find better and more unique moves than humans ever can. When technology evolves very fast there is no infrastructure to deal with new conflicts surrounding that new technology

In September 2022 the artist Jason Alen won the digital art category of the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts competition, after which he revealed that his art piece Théâtre D’opéra Spatial was generated by the AI program Midjourney. His submission did not violate any guidelines, but Jason Alen faced backlash concerning his submission, and next year AI-assisted art is not allowed in the digital art category.

This controversy sparked an interest surrounding the ethics and laws of AI-generated art, especially creativity, authorship, and copyright. Tools to create AI art are getting better and more accessible every day. Things that only experts could do are now generated with a sentence. The goal of this project is to create more awareness of the complexity the new ai generative models bring to society, by creating engagement and debate. 

This is done by making Poe-m a security camera that is able to generate poems that reflect its observations of the world around it. Poe-m decides the style, the mood, and the moment when a poem should be written. Poe-m is used to make the idea of a machine that is creative on its own more concrete for a general audience but also to attract attention which later can be redirected towards the discussion. By presenting the audience with a technology that is both threatening and beautiful, a sense of unease and uncertainty is created that reflects the complex nature of AI and its potential impact on society.