Anna Ridler

Anna Ridler (*1985) is an artist and researcher who works with systems of knowledge and how technologies are created in order to better understand the world. She is particularly interested in ideas around measurement and quantification and how this relates to the natural world. Her process often involves working with collections of information or data, particularly datasets, to create new and unusual narratives Her work has been exhibited at cultural institutions worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, HeK Basel, the ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, and Sheffield Documentary Festival. She was a European Union EMAP fellow and the winner of the 2018-2019 DARE Art Prize. Ridler was listed as one of the nine “pioneering artists” exploring AI’s creative potential by Artnet and received an honorary mention in the 2019 Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for the category AI & Life Art. She was nominated for a “Beazley Designs of the Year” award in 2019 by the Design Museum for her work on datasets and categorisation. Anna Ridler lives and works in London, UK.

 

 

Link: www.annaridler.com

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Mosaic Virus 2019, single screen installation

 

 

 

Anna Ridler's video work "Mosaic Virus” from 2018 is created with the help of artificial intelligence and runs as a moving image on a screen. The work is based on several thousand self-photographed photos of tulips, which Ridler uses as training images for an AI, a GAN (generative adversarial network). The GAN uses the input images to generate new tulip images that are constantly moving and changing on the screen. The blossoming tulips change shape in real time according to the constantly changing value of the Bitcoin. Ridler draws a parallel between the historical "tulip mania" of the 17th century and the current speculations in crypto currencies. "Mosaic" is the name of a virus that caused particularly desirable stripes on the tulips of the 1630s. In Ridler's work, the changing width and shape of the stripes correspond to the ups and downs of the the Bitcoin’s value. Ridler's moving images show both "machinic" tulip interpretations of the AI and the abstract movements of the Bitcoin stock exchange, for which the AI-generated tulips and their movements serve as a kind-of representational diagram.

 

 

Text: Michael Reisch

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Mosaic Virus 2019, 3 screen installation

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Mosaic Virus 2019, 3 screen installation

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Mosaic Virus 2019, single screen installation, detail

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Mosaic Virus 2019, single screen installation

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Myriad (Tulips) 2018 (data-trainigssets for GAN/AI)

 

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Myriad (Tulips) 2018 (data-trainigssets for GAN/AI)

 

 

 

Anna Ridler: Myriad (Tulips) 2018 (data-trainigssets for GAN/AI)

 

 

 

Photos: Emily Grundon