Personal Taxonomies
512 calligraphic paintings, 1024 GAN-based calligraphy graphics, books, animations, Jacquard Textiles

2019-

Overview

Personal Taxonomies is a multi-year project aimed at my attempts to use Machine Learning and GANs to explore Chomsky's notions of Deep Structure, using large bodies of my own work to find internal consistencies in my brain's functioning. According to Chomsky, linguistics comes from patterns in humans' brain physiology - in a way, a predisposition to language. After seeing work by neurologists selling to reconstruct what is seen by analyzing brain scans, I wanted to do the same using machine learning systems and large bodies of my own paintings.  If I can get a machine learning system to find the inner consistencies or "patterns" in my own mind through analyzing large bodies of my work, perhaps I can cross-compare two sets of these AI-bases analyses against one another to show the "deep structures" of my brain when creating these works.
 

Process

I developed an asemic (without meaning) calligraphy style for nearly two years based on my experience with Japanese and Persian writing. My Machine Drawing and Alien Calligraphy at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2007 (40 calligraphy-based asemic paintings) inspired this work.
 

-For over two years, I made these calligraphies on my iPad and chose 512 my favorites. 
-These were separated into two sets of 256 images fed into playform.io's freeform morph GAN and iterated 512 times.
-For each of the results, I took 256 images from the first result of each set and then fed these into a freeform morph GAN. It was essential to pick the identical results from each set of images, or else there would be no consistency.
-These images were cross-compared in a platform GAN, and the output of the GAN was examined. 

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Questions:
Does this methodology really reveal my mind's Deep Structure?
Does this project reveal patterns in my cognition? 
Could other methodologies have better results?
What are the aesthetics of the project?

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Installation
The gallery version of this installation has several shapes:
-a 6 volume book set, one containing my writing on the project., two containing the sets of calligraphies, two containing the first set of results, and one documenting the comparison. 
- gallery exhibition of 2048 works with Animations of each set of works as morphs.

- NFTs of specific results.

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