Ambigrammatic Figures (2020). We present computationally-generated “ambigrams”: images that are legible both upside-down and right-side up. Created with a generative adversarial network, they may be displayed in any orientation. In this project, a collection of 55 such ambigrammatic faces have been synthesized in high resolution, and printed as a limited edition deck of poker-sized cards.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bivalent face illusions were often used to depict uncomplicated dualities, such as young-old, good-evil, or blessed-damned. The faces in our Ambigrammatic Figures deck reflect the moral ambiguities of a darker and more uncertain time, marked by ecological crisis, misinformation, identitarianism, patriarchal authoritarianism, and the social unrest of a polity divided against itself.
We acknowledge our debt to the individuals whose faces alchemically influenced our machine’s hallucinations. No identification with actual persons is intended or should be inferred, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.
Website: https://github.com/golanlevin/AmbigrammaticFigures
