Anna Ridler in exhibition at Centre Pompidou Paris
EMAP residency artwork Mosaic Virus (2018-19)
Mosaic Virus by Anna Ridler was included in the exhibition Neurons: Simulated intelligence at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 26 February – 20 April 2020. The project was developed during Anna Ridler’s EMAP Residency at IMPAKT in 2018. The European Media Art Platform (EMAP) is a partnership of 15 European media art organisations, organised within the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Since 2018, EMAP has been supporting artists in the production of new work through residencies at IMPAKT and other organizations across Europe.
While artificial intelligence appears to have invaded all the industrial fields of the contemporary world, from finance to medicine, games to behaviour, architecture and the military, this situation has never really been linked to the history of neuro-science and neuro-computation. The exhibition Neurons, simulated intelligence at Centre Pompidou highlighted the links between the research of artists, architects, designers and musicians, and that by major scientific laboratories or the industrial sector.
About Mosaic Virus
In Mosaic Virus, Anna Ridler draws historical parallels between tulip-mania, the first financial bubble in 17th century Netherlands and the speculation currently ongoing around crypto-currencies. The blooming tulips in the piece present a version of Dutch still life paintings, updated for the 21st century by the use of AI. The changing appearance of the tulips is created with a GAN (generative adversarial network) algorithm, trained on a dataset of thousands of tulips photographed by the artist. The AI dreams up possible and impossible forms of the flowers, just as in Dutch still lifes, which combined realism with botanical impossibility.
“Mosaic” is the name of the virus causing the petal mutations which increased the desirability and market value of the bulbs in the tulip speculation of the 17th century. In Mosaic Virus, the rhythm of the mutation is based on the exchange values of the bitcoin, changing over time to show how the market fluctuates.
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Neurones, les intelligences simulées” | Centre Pompidou (at min 14:00)