SINGULARITY IN HERITAGE

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Orkhan Mammadov is pioneering and one of the few innovative media artists from Azerbaijan, who have also emerged on the international scene since representing his home country in the Venice Biennial in 2019. He mixes eastern heritage representation, popular aesthetics, references to surrealism, and documentary conventions in his AI (artificial intelligence) & ML (machine learning) based installations.

His works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in technology in the global context with rethinking Middle Eastern cultural heritage.

The Idea of Saving Aesthetics employs data consisting of traditional carpets, rugs, and kilims. Processed and trained using the latest state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. A neural network computing system that processed tens of thousands of archived ornamental images from museums and libraries. It creates new unlimited combinations based on their similarities. “The Idea of Saving Aesthetics“ creates imaginary rugs that didn’t exist so far. More than 15,000 carpet compositions and sketches were collected by artist & processed by artificial intelligence. It was aimed to create the feeling of diving into the paintings. AI generates new concepts and meanings. It blurs the boundaries between reality and the fake. These actions further prove cultural development, as non-human intelligence replaces traditional craft tools. World's first AI-generated carpet - Project premiered in Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale 2019.