Painting with Fire: A History in GANs by Bard Ionson

Painting with Fire presents a vignette of transformation: the evolution of GANs from 2014 - 2023 seen through the eyes of fire. Using 14 vintage GAN models, Ionson articulates the emergence of synthetic image generation. Ionson explores fire as the quintessence of humanity's relationship to both innovation and destruction, embracing the unexpected abstractions of classic AI as a distinctive aesthetic statement. GAN (generative adversarial network) technologies were developed by researchers and programmers but then utilized by artists. Though the technology was invented to make the images as realistic as possible, Bård subverts this to use it chaotically and abstractly; the opposite of what the AI researchers had in mind. This project celebrates the innovators and artists who have brought synthetic image generation to life with models such as the aiCAN, DCGAN, Stylegan 1, 2 & 3, bigGan, biGAN, pix2pix, AttnGan and more. https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire/ a Sovrn Curated release