mowna’s Breakthrough Exhibition Curated by Artificial Intelligence: This Show is Curated by a Machine

The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) will open their final show of the year “This Show is Curated by a Machine on September 23, 2021. The Artificial Intelligence curated exhibition opens with a talk on the development of the AI model followed by a Q&A with the AI Team: IV (Ivan Pravdin) and museum co-founders cari ann shim sham* and Joey Zaza. “This Show is Curated by a Machine runs September 23, 2021 through January 31, 2022 tickets bought prior to opening day, September 23rd,  include entrance to AI talk and are available at:  https://www.mowna.org/museum/this-show-is-curated-by-a-machine

Earlier this year, The Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned and exhibited the work “The Next Biennial Should Be Curated by a Machine” for their online artport. In response the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art has designed an artificial intelligence curator that will not only redefine how we look at curation and AI but will also underscore the need to move forward with AI curation in an ethical way.

The artificial intelligence model was trained on image sets from various sources, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the mowna Biennial submissions, an exhibit of around 88 international artists from 44 countries.

“Curation is very subjective. It’s my hope through the development of an AI curator that we can allow for equity and diversity, and eliminate some biases,” says cari ann shim sham*.

Artists in the show include Alice Prum, a London based artist whose work explores the invisible relationships between space, the body, and technology. Bridget DeFranco is an east coast media artist working against the high-stimulation nature of the screen. Avideh Salmanpour is an Iranian artist whose paintings explore the bewilderment of contemporary man and the attempt to find a new way.

The artificial intelligence curator was created by multiple artists. IV is a post-contemporary artist working with various artificial intelligence and neural networking techniques. cari ann shim sham* is the co-founder and curator of mowna, a wild artist working at the intersection of dance and technology, and an associate arts professor of dance and technology at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Joey Zaza is the co-founder and curator of mowna, and works in photography, software, video, sound, and installation. They combined forces to explore the potential of using artificial intelligence in art curation. The team’s initial thoughts, strategies and questions in the development of the AI model can be found on mowna’s blog.

Human curation is also included alongside the AI curation for “This Show is Curated by a Machine  to offer a comparison. Text written by the team will explain why or why not they think the AI chose the work. This show is a successful completion of phase one of mowna’s AI model which ranks and curates a show using image based files. mowna will release a paper with its phase one research and findings to the public. With this data the team will enter into phase two development for the AI’s ability to curate sound and video files.

“This Show is Curated by a Machine will be installed and available for viewing on September 23, 2021 and marks the third online art exhibition by mowna. The second, the 2021 mownaBiennial, showcases art of all mediums and focuses on exhibiting art that might have otherwise gone unseen due to gaps in the post-pandemic art world. It is currently still on exhibit until September 22, 2021 and can be viewed on the mowna website. Tickets are a sliding scale of pay-what-you-wish.

mowna makes it their priority to showcase a broad range of art and is committed to diversity in every way. It provides an international online platform for the most timely, diverse, and preeminent artists. At the center of the constantly changing and expanding art world, mownashowcases a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar. Members will have the opportunity to see artists who have been curated by the MoMA or the Whitney alongside artists available only on mowna.

As the global landscape shifts towards a more technological way of being, mowna is there to meet the needs of an ever-changing art world. The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art was formed to feature the newest art developments and make art of all mediums accessible to everyone. And it unmistakably builds on that foundation with the upcoming exhibition “This Show is Curated by a Machine .

For more information on current and upcoming exhibitions and events, please visit mowna’s new pages on Instagram and Facebook (below) as well as the museum’s official website.