Artistic Inspiration Research 1: Exploring Data, Nature, and Art: The Creative World of Anna Ridler

I. Introduction – Anna Ridler

• An artist and researcher
• Works with systems of knowledge and how technologies are created in order to better understand the world
• Explores the intersection of technology, nature, and the visual arts
• Her projects often involve datasets, artificial intelligence, and complex visual representations to comment on contemporary issues

II. Process

Ridler’s works often begin with the collection of data, either visual or textual, which she uses to train AI models. Her creative process includes meticulous curation and personal intervention, allowing her to highlight the biases and limitations inherent in these technologies.

Main features:

• Technical and Material Features: She uses a combination of machine learning algorithms, hand-drawn annotations, and large-scale installations. Her works are often presented as video installations or digital prints.
• Forms of Interaction: The interaction is primarily intellectual and emotional. Audiences engage with the concepts she presents—like the impact of tulip mania in “Mosaic Virus” or the commodification of nature in “Myriad (Tulips)”.
• Artist’s Intentions and Inspirations: Ridler’s work is deeply influenced by historical and contemporary issues, such as environmental change and economic speculation. Her use of technology is a critique of how we perceive and value the natural world.

III. Works

It features AI-generated animations of night-blooming and night-scented flora: queen of the night cactuses, the moonflower, night-blooming jasmine, night phlox, and evening stock. Painterly petals slowly blossom into a dreamlike garden — chronobiological clocks set against the mechanical and digital structures that set the pace of our contemporary lives.

Created with artificial intelligence and a high-tech machine that can keep time at an atomic level, Circadian Nocturne also pairs modern, highly precise computerized timekeeping methods with the often unpredictable and imprecise imagery created by autonomous digital software and is part of an ongoing project exploring time and technology. Welcoming this tension, Ridler visually obscures tech-based accuracy with something more organic and in sync with the natural landscape.

Myriad (Tulips) is an installation of thousands of hand-labeled photographs of tulips; these photographs were later used as the dataset for Mosaic Virus 2018 and Mosaic Virus 2019. By choosing to make the dataset an artwork it draws attention to the skill, labour and time that goes into constructing it, whilst also helping to expose the human element in machine learning, usually hidden by algorithmic processes. 

“I took ten thousand, or myriad of photographs of tulips over the course of three months whilst on residency in the Netherlands.” Anna said.

The installation of all of the photographs is over 50 square metres, giving an overwhelming sense of the time, money and effort that goes into constructing a dataset. Each photograph is carefully affixed one by one with magnets to a specially painted black wall in a laborious process to form a seemingly precise grid. Up close, however, slants and errors come into view, evoking the imperfect and arduous human labor behind machine learning and also its imperfection. 

 

IV. Discussion

Significance of the Work:

• Challenges the viewer to consider the implications of data and technology on our understanding of nature and economy. 
• Her work is significant in the creative coding community because it merges artistic expression with technical exploration, pushing the boundaries of both fields.

Impact on Creative Coding:

• Exemplifies the use of creative coding as a medium for artistic expression, showing how technology can be used not just to create art, but to critique and reflect on the society that produces it.

Connections with CCLab Concepts

• Her exploration of data bias, representation, and the aesthetics of machine learning are directly relevant to topics covered in CCLab, such as data visualization and algorithmic art.

Inspirations and Future Directions

• Her work inspires further exploration into the ethical implications of AI and data in art. It encourages thinking about how data can be used creatively to tell stories or make complex concepts accessible to the public.

 

V. Conclusion

In exploring Anna Ridler’s work, I am struck by how she merges personal, historical, and technological narratives to create thought-provoking pieces It inspired me to think about incorporating similar techniques into my first big project for this course.

I aim to explore how personal data and visual narratives can be combined to create an interactive, engaging experience that prompts viewers to question their own perceptions of technology and nature.

Resources: 

Artist Website: https://annaridler.com/works
Interview: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5500326fe4b0564d4c2494d1/t/63d11ad7f4e51f407212014e/1674648281891/ANTENNAE+ISSUE+53.pdf