Cinema
Salvador Dali Lives: Museum Brings Artist Back to Life with AI
VIVA DALI: THE DALI MUSEUM BRINGS SALVADOR DALI BACK TO LIFE THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Avant-garde Experience Announced on the 30th Anniversary of Dali’s Death
Imagine Salvador Dali welcoming you to the Dali Museum as if he were alive today, sharing observations on current events and shedding light on the motivations behind his artwork. In April, that imagined Dali becomes real with the debut of Dali Lives, a groundbreaking AI experience exclusively at The Dali.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (January 23, 2019) – Imagine legendary surrealist artist Salvador Dali personally welcoming you to the museum, even sharing observations on current events and the motivations behind his masterpieces. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida announced today, on the 30th anniversary of the artist’s death, that it will celebrate Dali’s art and legacy with “Dali Lives,” a groundbreaking experience to be unveiled exclusively at The Dali in April 2019.
Visitors to the Museum will soon have the opportunity to learn more about Dali’s life and work from the person who knew him best: the artist himself. Using an artificial intelligence (AI)-based cutting edge technique, the new “Dali Lives” experience employs machine learning to create a version of Dali’s likeness, resulting in an uncanny resurrection of the mustached master. When the experience opens, visitors will for the first time be able to interact with an engaging lifelike Salvador Dali on a series of screens throughout the Museum.
“Dali was prophetic in many ways and understood his historical importance,” says Dr. Hank Hine, executive director at The Dali. “He wrote, If someday I may die, though it is unlikely, I hope the people in the cafes will say, ‘Dali has died, but not entirely.’ This technology lets visitors experience his bigger-than-life personality in addition to our unparalleled collection of his works.”
The Dali partnered with Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco (GS&P) to bring the master of Surrealism to life. The Museum began this immersive project by collecting and sharing hundreds of interviews, quotes, and existing archival footage from the prolific artist. GS&P used these extensive materials to train an AI algorithm to “learn” aspects of Dali’s face, then looked for an actor with the same general physical characteristics of Dali’s body. The AI then generates a version of Dali’s likeness to match the actor’s face and expressions. To educate visitors while engaging with “Dali Lives,” the Museum used authentic writings from Dali himself – coupled with dynamic present-day messages – reenacted by the actor.
The “Dali Lives” project further demonstrates the Museum’s commitment to staying on the forefront of technology, embracing new methods to engage guests in unconventional ways to delight and educate them about Salvador Dali and his works. Sometimes controversial like Dali himself, this emerging technology is being used for the first time in inspiring service to art.
The revolutionary experience has been announced alongside introductory teaser videos. While gazing directly into the camera, Dali appears to challenge the idea of his own death, providing an impressive preview of what the experience will look like when it premieres at The Dali Museum in April 2019.
This is the third collaboration between The Dali and GS&P. The duo first introduced “Gala Contemplating You” as part of a 2014 exhibition which turned a visitor’s selfie into a projected, full-scale replica of the 1976 monumental painting Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko). Then in 2016, they partnered together for the “Dreams of Dali” virtual reality experience, which transports viewers into Dali’s painting, Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus.” “Dreams of Dali” has been recognized by the Cannes Lions and Webby Awards, among others, and guests can enjoy the experience as part of the permanent collection at The Dali or on their own VR devices.
To view the teaser videos and for additional information on “Dali Lives” and The Dali Museum, visit TheDali.org/DaliLives.
Ben Ridgway
Ben Ridgway is currently an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California, USA. He has 15 years of professional experience as both a 3D artist in the video game industry and as a Professor. While in the games industry he helped to create games for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft console systems. Ben has been making experimental animations since 1992.
“My abstract animations investigate the metaphysical features of reality. They are designed to stimulate archetypal associations and invite the viewer to make personal connections to the visual and auditory experience without any reliance on narrative or spoken language.”
Get Out, Atlanta, Sorry to Bother You, and The Afro-Surrealist Film Movement
Add “Sorry To Bother You” to the mix and there appears to be an Afro-Surrealism resurgence in Black cinema.
Surrealism is the 20-century avant-garde artistic and literary movement that sought to stir the creative potential of the unconscious mind position seemingly irrational imagery adjacent to one another. Artist Salvador Dali is among the most respect of that era.
Surrealism in film draws upon many of the philosophical principles as in the art world, using shocking, irrational and absurd imagery to challenge conventional reality. American filmmaker David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive are each considered among the best contemporary examples of this technique, while Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling were said to have each incorporated some surrealist ideals in their works.
First coined
in 2009by New Jersey’s Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka, Afro Surrealism focuses on the present day experience of African Americans as interpreted via artistic endeavor.
Read the full article at theshadowleague.com
What is Afro-Surrealism?
Afro-Surrealism or Afrosurrealism is a literary and cultural aesthetic that is a response to mainstream surrealism in order to reflect the lived experience of people of color. First coined by Amiri Baraka in 1974,[1] this movement focuses on the present day experience of African Americans. Afro-Surrealism is based on the manifesto written by D. Scot Miller, in which he says, “Afro-Surrealism sees that all ‘others’ who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist…” The manifesto delineates Afro-Surrealism from Surrealism and Afro-Futurism. The manifesto also declares the necessity of Afro-Surrealism, especially in San Francisco, California. The manifesto lists ten tenants that Afro-Surrealism follows including how “Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past,” and how “Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.”
Via Wikipedia.
Frank Moth
About Frank Moth
Frank Moth creates nostalgic postcards from a distant but at the same time familiar future. He makes digital collages and compositions with specific, distinctive color palettes, in a critically acclaimed style that is immediately recognizable. Frank Moth was born in Athens in March 2014. He exists as an artist and as an alias for the two people that hide behind him. He has been featured in many publications worldwide, such as Huffington Post US, as well as Buzzfeed and MTV Greece. His work is currently showcased around the world in many galleries online
Artist Statement
The compositions are mainly human-centered. The presence of the human element is obvious, yet perpetually incomplete. There’s always something missing, interrupted, or covered. The face, for example, is usually covered and many times it’s not even there, so as to not surrender its vulnerable introspection, insecurity, and psychic truth without a fight.
Depersonalization/Derealization
In many of Frank Moth’s works people are pictured gazing upon themselves and their own lives on Earth from some distant point in outer space. The perspective of all things always seems to be on a strange verge, between a dream and an urban daily life.
The smothering failure of man to define and refine happiness today within geographic, temporal, and material {technological and consumerist} bounds, is repeatedly alluded to through the use of old, manipulated paper ads from decades past, as well as old fashion magazines.
Revision/Revival/Rebirth/Insecurity
Many of the artworks feature a subtle expression of companionship or the silent, solitary, obsessive search for it {the people usually have their backs turned and there is a hint of movement in the scenery}, combined with the surreal size disproportion and the disturbed relation between man and his environment/surroundings.
Obsession/Music/Pixels/Architecture
This is an attempt to create harmony between people and their surroundings, however imaginary, by using the eternal elements of colours, numbers, simple geometric shapes, symmetry, and subtraction, as well as universal words and concepts like “love”, “together”, “forever”, “never”, “infinity”, “why”.