Service Design Masterclasses

Mauro Martino is the founder and director of the Visual AI Lab at IBM Research, Cambridge, US.
His works have been featured in important scientific journals such Nature, Science, PNAS, among all, and textbooks about data visualization: “Data Visualization”, “The Truthful Art”, “The Best American Infographics” 2015 and 2016 editions, “Network Science”.
Mauro is an award-winning designer whose projects received the Gold Medal at The Vizzies Visualization Challenge by National Science Foundation, Innovation by Design Award by Fast Company, Kantar Information is Beautiful Award, Webby Awards. His projects have been shown at international festivals and exhibitions including Ars Electronica, RIXC Art Science Festival, Global Exchange at Lincoln Center, the Serpentine Gallery, London, 123 DATA, Paris, Museo Ludwig in Budapest, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Germany.

Abstract

The most recent developments in the field of neural networks have introduced a new aesthetic in art and design. We have discovered hidden or latent space. A place that, except indirectly, we cannot access and which we cannot control. It is located in the depths of the inner layers of neural networks: we can easily move within it but it is too large and complex to be mapped.

In this contribution, I will try to navigate this new space and understand the shapes and aesthetics that are generated between the hidden layers of the deep neural networks. We will see together several examples of this “Hidden Beauty” and how it varies within different architectures and using different data collections to train the models.

Artists and scientists are using artificial intelligence to innovate and create social impact. Human creativity is evolving thanks to new forms of co-creation between people and generative models.