Caffeinated Diversions

Sophisticated neural networks are complex and can produce surprising results. Extensive experimentation is necessary to tune the design and training of a neural network, and to discover what it can do. Caffeinated Diversions presents a selection of Scott Eaton’s daily exercises to discover what he can produce with the AI neural networks he has trained.

Each starts with a sketch—a simple line drawing. Then, the neural network takes over as it tries to process the sketch through the patterns on which it was trained; in this case, thousands of photographs of human bodies in various positions taken by the artist. As Eaton describes it: “in some ways the neural network was training me in reverse to draw differently, to get it to do the right thing.”

Installation views of Scott Eaton, Caffeinated Diversions, 2018–19, in The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, March 5 to October 23, 2022, Photo: Ian Lefebvre, Vancouver Art Gallery