Bridging the Gap: A partnership between BIPOC artists/developers
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being utilized across various industries, including the arts. However, the use of AI in art is still in its early stages and often relies on biased data sets and
contracts that do not represent diverse perspectives and the rights of the artist. We aim to address this issue by collaborating with BIPOC contemporary artists, researchers and partners to develop datasets on their artwork, create contracts to protect intellectual property and copyright, ensuring that AI development in the arts is inclusive and respectful of cultural diversity.
As part of our project to research BIPOC AI datasets, creation of artist contracts to protect their rights and for use in AI database development, we have established partnerships with a number of organizations that have expertise in the field of visual and media arts. Our key partner is Video Pool Media Arts Centre (VP) based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
VP is a key partner in the dissemination and evaluation of the project outcomes and findings. They will assist in organizing workshops and other events to share the project outcomes with their network and the broader visual and media arts community.
Bridging the Gap is pleased to have Justin Bear L’Arrivee, Nathan Flores, Omid Moterassad, and Evan Tremblay as participants. More artists will be highlighted! Stay tuned!
Experiments with AI stylization
During the workshop the artists experimented with text-to-image Ai tools including ones that had been trained on examples from two of the participating artists: Jason Baerg and Claude Latour. This was a unique opportunity to explore the ramifications of new AI-based tools and how they can mimic an artist’s style. With the consent of the artists we explored how it feels to combine artist’s style with your own style and subjects – exploring a new way of collaborating and raising issues around authenticity, ownership and an ability for an artist;s legacy to include not just specific art works but a recording of their personal style and vision that can be used to create new works for all time.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
