A Garden of Men (2019) is an AI generated artwork that addresses the issue of cultural exclusiveness and biases of ML and dataset through a practical critique of culturally biased datasets. It raises the question of machine perception of different cultures. These datasets are, in analogy, the modern archeological record of material culture, of which we perceive—contemporary— societies through.
The concept of the piece is to layer; to layer either to conceal or to expose. The process of making the piece consists of three main layers: the original image, the texture, and finally the model treatment. Conceptually, that layering could also be found in the composition of the seated men, how that manifests both dystopic and cynical impressions especially with using DeepDream, all of which created a pseudo-archival piece of the history of the “other”.