Pixels in progress

Faces Of… GAIN. A Studio Art + Commerce project.

From the Studio Art + Commerce website:

Studio Art + Commerce were invited by SDAIA (Saudi Data & AI Authority) to be a Tech Partner at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, in September 2024. Our challenge was to reimagine Faces Of… in a way that reflected the summit's focus on AI and technology.

This year's theme was ‘Now, Next & Never’ and we wanted to bring an experience that not only captured the spirit of the summit’s community of innovators but also explored the ethics of AI and the role of Humans, demonstrating how both could work together in real-time to create something meaningful.

Faces Of… GAIN swapped the robotic arm for a live artist who worked in front of a digital canvas, a live experiment in human and AI collaboration. Given the summit’s focus on technology and the large number of attendees, we developed the digital version of the installation to efficiently capture over 700 guests.

AI rapidly generated sketch portraits in real-time, a process that was quicker and more scalable than the physical version, more than a human artist alone could manage.

Role : Technical Director

Technical Overview

The system pipeline uses multiple tools & software. The bulk of the control system and UI is built in Touchdesigner & Python:

• Photo processing

• Curation tools

• Management of pixel to vector processing pipeline

• File management & queue systems

• Interfacing with bespoke AI tools ( The Peeps )

• Digital portrait painting system