Daniel Ambrosi

“Dreamscapes” by Daniel Ambrosi: A short animation project designed to illustrate the extreme resolution, zooming power, and surprising details within our Dreamscapes (AI-infused computational photography).

My initial experiments in computational photography were driven by my desire to create photo-based depictions of the world that better convey the feeling of a place and the way we really experience it. My “grand format” landscape images that result from these experiments are inspired by the 19th century master paintings of the Hudson River School and by the great romantic European landscape paintings that preceded them. Like those works, some of which reached ten feet in width, I’ve endeavored to create uncannily immersive and idyllic scenic experiences that deliver both breadth and detail. Now, capitalizing on recent technological developments in deep learning and artificial intelligence, along with the hard work and ingenuity of my generous engineering colleagues, Joseph Smarr (Google) and Chris Lamb (NVIDIA), I’ve been able to push my artwork in an intriguing new direction. Thanks to custom modifications made to Google’s DeepDream software, it has become possible for me to imbue my giant landscape images with a stunning degree of wholly unexpected form and content that is only revealed upon close-up viewing. These “Dreamscapes” represent my attempt to remind myself (and others) that we are all actively participating in a shared waking dream, a dream that is on the precipice of considerable amplification by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Learn more here.

Images and Video Courtesy of Daniel Ambrosi