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Show HN: I built an AI art installation at home generating new pieces on the fly
- mfi 5y agoI just finished my latest project, building an AI art installation at home, generating 100 % unique artworks on the fly. Just push the button below the screen and another one will be displayed. When the button has been pushed, the old artwork is deleted and can't be retrieved again. Setup: * An Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX was used for all logic, machine learning inference, art kiosk GUI etc. * A StyleGAN was used to generate the artworks, trained on ~5k images of abstract art. * A passive infrared sensor (SR602) was integrated with the Jetson to reduce screen burn-in. When no movement has been detected around the installation within a pre-defined threshold, the screen shuts off until movement is detected. * A custom control box was built, encapsulating most of the electronics.
- spoonjim 5y agoWhat country uses those round black outlets?
- mfi 5y agoI'm from Sweden :)
- Guillaume86 5y agoRed countries on this map: https://world-power-plugs.com/plugs-outlets-types https://world-power-plugs.com/plugs-outlets-types
- prions 5y agoThis is really cool! I'd love to seed the GAN with my own artwork and generate new pieces in my style
- mfi 5y agoThanks! Depending on how many artworks you've created, it might be difficult to train a GAN network on them (due to overfitting). What you might try is to train one network with a lot of random artworks, then use a Style-transfer network to convert the generated pieces into your style.
- sandGorgon 5y agodo you have the code for training ? i wasnt able to find it in your repo. That would be so cool!
- mfi 5y agoI left it out as I wanted people to use their own generative art. Here's the implementation I used: https://github.com/taki0112/StyleGAN-Tensorflow https://github.com/taki0112/StyleGAN-Tensorflow
- bravura 5y agoDo you actually want to disseminate your work and have many other people try it? Or is that not actually a goal. Right now it really feels like this isn't a priority. Which is fine. But if it is a priority that other people replicate your work, I'm not sure you're making this as easy for people as possible.
- mfi 5y agoMy intension is not for people to replicate my work (the trained GAN-network), but rather supply a tutorial over how to build the installation. Then people can add their own generative art/code. It could be ML-generated, or traditional "code-art".
- sandGorgon 5y agoHey thanks! so just put your pictures and run the python script ? and we can take the model and drop-in replace in yoru code ?
- phkahler 5y agoOr seed it with XKCD.
- kamilszybalski 5y agothis comment seeded an interesting idea! Many artists and photographers want to get into the NFT space but they don't necessarily have experience in digital art creation. If you could leverage AI to generate digital art based on real artist/photographer inputs, perhaps you could create a nice little marketplace business.. or maybe just a simple AI generator plugin for an existing marketplace..
- tartoran 5y agoMost artists (with some exceptions) want to have nothing to do with AI generative art. They will simply continue to produce art the way they do with older technologies such as paints and brushes, musical instruments, film equipment, writing tools, and so on. Art making involves a process, a state of mind and there's always a human behind it who digests everything around them and spit something out. All these imitative AI art are beautiful in their own way but really have no substance; once the wow factor weans out they won't have much of a leg to stand on in my opinion. Art making is a self discovering journey at the same time. Having said that, I'm curious and somewhat excited to see how these will evolve. As I said, I find them beautiful. As a painter myself there is nothing out there that will make me not paint. Sure, I sometimes use tools but there's always the me in there who is in control or driven by my human instinct.
- kamilszybalski 5y agoThat's good insight. I am not an artist but I've also run this idea by a friend who is. He loves the idea and is curious what a technological interpretation of his work might look like. He's also interested in how we might use those interpretations to create a new segment of collections for this brand.
- artur_makly 5y agoEverything is a remix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd-dqUuvLk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd-dqUuvLk4
- tartoran 5y ago
- KingFelix 5y agoThats what I am thinking about, what kind of images to train on
- TuringNYC 5y ago>> Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX Curious -- since you're only doing the inference/generation on the frame, and since you're not doing it all the time, did you need a Jetson or would an RPI have sufficed? Did you test inference speeds across different edge compute options?
- dheera 5y agoYeah I think the way I'd do it (personally) is have an RPi constantly generate new images in the background and cache them until storage is maxed out, then when you hit the button it just fetches the next image from cache. That would allow the frame to be somewhat lower power and also decrease ventilation requirements -- no fan needed.
- raisedbyninjas 5y agoIs it me or is this more of a woodworking guide than an AI art guide? I only see a small blurb to put AI art code here. Presumably the button/replenish image dir. is a seed component to the AI. I suppose that further removing the art generation from the installation diminishes the magic of art. The engineer in me would further trim this down by pre-generating art on a PC and slap it on an SD card plugged into basic picture digital frame. Or dispense with storage and connect it to Wifi to poll AIArtAsAService.com.
- bluerival 5y agoThe difference between this project and a digital photo frame is as you’ve described - The AI generation. I think the destruction makes it special too, if every unique image disappears forever at the click of a button.
- dheera 5y agoInteresting! I built a generative art frame based on "{Shan, Shui}" by Lingdong Huang https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/ https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/ but also planning to use it for neural-net based generative art. I wasn't planning on putting a NX in it though, I was thinking of just keeping the Pi Zero in there and have it do all computations in "the cloud" or on a Nano/Xavier box sitting elsewhere on the same network. I'm currently working on a 3-panel version of the above: https://imgur.com/a/3IfKpb3 https://imgur.com/a/3IfKpb3 I didn't make my own frame though, I designed the dimensions and had it custom-built by a frame company, which was surprisingly affordable.
- tyingq 5y agoThis is more interesting to me as I'd never suspect it was generated art.
- dheera 5y agoYeah that was what I was going for, guests who come would not even know that there are electronics in the frame, and suddenly the art would change every now and then. Requires drilling a fat hole in the wall to send the USB cable down behind the drywall but meh, needing to patch drywall when moving out isn't the end of the world, usually if you chat up the maintainence folk you can get some extra paint of exactly the right color and spackle/paint it yourself.
- at_a_remove 5y agoWhat would be amusing is gaze detection such that the art would change only when someone wasn't looking for a while, and then maybe only "advance the scroll" an inch or two.
- mfi 5y agoThat is amazing!! I actually looked into buying an E-ink screen for this project, but decided not to due to the cost and the lack of compatibility. Was the E-ink screen simple to work with?
- Quarrel 5y agoOk, so this is cool as fuck. I don't think much of the actually produced art, but the fact that you laid out your whole process makes this drool-worthy. Now it is just a challenge as to- can I do better? Great job.
- wombatmobile 5y agoNobody could include more individual photos in the how to. This one has how many gazillion photos?
- PebblesRox 5y agoOooh, next step is to create an AI picture frame that generates images based on the photo documentation of its own creation.
- mfi 5y agoGlad you like it! Of course you can! Give it a try and share it afterwards ;)
- Justin_K 5y agoAwesome! I'd recommend running your cables behind the drywall, the look is very clean!
- mfi 5y agoYeah, that would've been optimal, but it's also a lot more work, so I decided to use cable channels in the end.
- jonbraun 5y agoCool installation! What was the process of obtaining the 5k abstract art images?
- mfi 5y agoI scraped them from various art websites.
- throwaway158497 5y agoCool project. How much does this setup cost you?
- mfi 5y agoHmm, I think The Frame 32" was about $500 and the Nvidia Xavier NX costed as much (including import taxes etc). The other stuff (cable channels, screws, MDF etc) was probably around $50. So a total of around ~$1050.
- binarymax 5y agoReally beautifully done. Thank you for sharing it with us! Quick question: can you use the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX to train a model? Or can it only be used for inference?
- pfundstein 5y agoWhy not use the artworks themselves as a screensaver?
- sova 5y agoVery beautiful. If I trained the network on say, just drawings and painting Mondrian did, do you think they'd converge stylistically? Is a huge (5,000+ items) dataset required to get decent results?
- mfi 5y agoThanks! I think it's quite likely that you will heavily overfit the network if you only use a handful of images, where it might end up reconstructing the exact paintings. I only have experience using 5,000+ images.
- TheRealNGenius 5y agoReally cool that you brought up Mondrian, since I literally implemented a Haskell program that generated art in their signature style during college. No AI required at all, just setting some random parameters. Here are some results: https://imgur.com/a/rtWkTTl https://imgur.com/a/rtWkTTl
- sova 5y agoEverything was great until I saw a curved line... Honestly though much better than a lot of people who try to imitate Mondrian
- orangegreen 5y agoI wonder if using a color e-ink display would make the art look more appealing on a wall.
- mfi 5y agoIt probably will! I actually looked into buying a color e-ink display, but ended up using a The Frame instead for a couple of reasons: * They are incredibly expensive if you want ~32" * I wasn't sure that it would've worked together with the Nvidia Xavier NX.
- sjg007 5y agoHow is the samsung frame? I am thinking of getting one..
- mfi 5y agoI think you're trading of the design for a bit of quality, you'll probably get more bang for the buck if you buy a non-designer smart TV. That being said, it's still a good TV!
- artur_makly 5y agowow first time I heard of this beast. https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/ https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/ looks incredible thanks for sharing.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoI've had the same thought, but alas. Prices are terrible.
- arsome 5y agoA little white balance work would go a long way I suspect. An OLED panel would really make things pop, but the burn-in issue might be a problem unless you had it rotating very regularly.
- qiqitori 5y ago
- spoonjim 5y agoThe installation is impressive but the output is underwhelming. Then again, I feel the same about the pieces in most contemporary art museums.
- ghostbrainalpha 5y agoHe just needs a higher resolution screen, a screen that is much bigger, and placed inside of very nice frame. With the cables hidden. Then it's ready for the gallery. Especially if you could come up with a way to filter out some of the images that look too much like how a random broken monitor will output. This image in particular feels like "real" art to me. https://imgur.com/gaJVSs3 https://imgur.com/gaJVSs3
- artiszt 5y agoit's okay as it is -- IF, and only IF, the artist says so ! Rauschenberg too, as well as Lichtenstein and many others, wouldn't have liked it a bit being turned into some hotair egomaniac 0-creative wraped in plastic in some fin-groupies Schnabel'oesque or Koons'ian gallery spot
- pessimizer 5y agoIf they're dead we shouldn't worry about what they would think about what we do; we have enough to worry about.
- guipsp 5y agoTaking existing art and twisting it is art too. In fact there was a movement I can't recall the name of dedicated to this?
- scollet 5y agoThe art is the installation.
- turtlebits 5y agoAgreed, but I think the animated GIF and small, extremely compressed JPGs in the repo don't help. Maybe a youtube video?
- raman162 5y agoVery cool. I now have a reason to get my hands on a Jetson. Also great work on the detailed readme.
- mfi 5y agoThanks! Yeah, the Xavier NX was way more powerful than what I expected!
- mholm 5y agoI was thinking the Frame TV had better color grading for the color temperature of the room. Does your video output not take advantage of this?
- wyldfire 5y agoMax Fischer? By any chance did you petition to keep a Latin class at your private high school? ;)
- mfi 5y agoHaha no, but it has definitely help me to hide embarrassing images from my youth on Google ;) It only show images from Rushmore
- shadowgovt 5y agoThat's extremely cool. Well done. :)
- mfi 5y agoThanks, it was a fun project!
- Sn0wCoder 5y agoVery cool. I work from home in my basement and would enjoy such a device. Any plans to sell them? Or know of similar devices? I could probably build one, but most likely would end up in pieces next to my other random projects…
- jcun4128 5y agoI wonder if you have to push the button or if it could auto-cycle at some interval. Powering is always interesting do usually need a dedicated power source like a wall plug less you had some other means to get power. Low energy/battery/harvesting maybe (I saw this runs on a Jetson).
- mfi 5y agoI actually implemented it so that you have to push the button. By adding a dimension where an artwork you like is just a button-push away from being deleted, it actually makes you enjoy it more.
- jcun4128 5y agoThis is just a thought. I don't know if you're aware of Github pages (probably) but regarding docs/hosting a basic UI with tabbed sections to present a chunked form of the README.
- LegitShady 5y agoPersonally believe that art requires intention and some attempt at communication but it's an interesting project.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIn this case I suppose the real artwork is the space of all artworks that the machine is sampling from.
- LegitShady 5y agoI'm not sure that makes this installation art in and of itself.
- cryptoz 5y agoWho's to say that the AI doesn't have intent, and makes no attempt at communication? These are certainly very philosophical questions and I would be ready to stand by the idea that first, there is possibly intent and communication here, and second, I've never heard of this narrow definition of art before. Art is art, defining it so narrowly seems strange to me.
- LegitShady 5y agoIt's ok to disagree with me - everyone is allowed a different opinion on art. I'll explain a bit more about my opinion, which you are free to disagree with. Personally I don't think a machine generating pixels from neural networks trained on intentional art can create art - it can create something that seems very similar because it seems to generate the same or similar output but its missing the process and intention of art. If an artist draws random shapes with no intention or intent to communicate or evoke thought/emotion, all they're doing is making shapes, unless the random shapes themselves are an intent to communicate something (which is difficult if they're actually random). 'art is art' is a tautology with no meaning, and defining art in a way that makes some things not art is the only way you can have a useful definition of art. Change my tire? Art. Spill chocolate milk on the table? art. vomit after drinking too much? art. because art is art, right? I guess the question is why you think everything, including things done without intention or intent to communicate, is art?
- hwayne 5y agoThis is amazingly cool.
- mfi 5y agoThanks!
- amirGi 5y agoThis is so freakin cool
- mfi 5y agoGlad you liked it!
- landgenoot 5y agoCool! Could also be nice with a A3 color printer and paper shredder. Banksy-style. This would make it less tv-isih
- swayvil 5y agoNice. What do you think of this? : https://vimeo.com/241051006 https://vimeo.com/241051006 Also, here's a generative art discord : https://discord.gg/gVna7Utm https://discord.gg/gVna7Utm
- dr-detroit 5y agoTaking things my kid could do into the next generation. Awesome.
- snarfmachine 5y agoVery cool. But have you put it up against the AI Turing test? :) https://gumgum.com/guides/artificial https://gumgum.com/guides/artificial
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gidam 5y agoit's funny what tech people consider Art. LOL
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qq4 5y agodo you find any of the generated images interesting? there is no thought behind any of them which leads me curious to how captivating they might be.
- mfi 5y agoSome of them are nice, but a lot of them are trash as well. So you need to click a few times before you find something you (I) like
- chorsestudios 5y agoAny chance you have a gallery somewhere with some of the nicer images?
- mirroregami 5y agoReally cool. One piece of feedback: Try to get the white balance to better match the warm wight light of the room. The tv will blend in much much better.
- dekhn 5y agoThe creator of ElectricSheep installs large installations like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Draves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Draves it uses crowdsourced human preference functions to drive the art evolution
- dukeofdoom 5y agoSamsung phones come with an adapter that can output to HDMI. Is there a phone app that could do something like this on a TV?
- dogma1138 5y agoYou can probably run it on a SmartTV directly…
- MikeDelta 5y agoNice! Art being lost forever is art in itself.
- mfi 5y agoThat's what I think as well, it adds an interesting dimension to the installation
- mrits 5y agoI hope you aren't syncing these random images to your iCloud account!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- huntercross 5y agoArt shouldn't be unlimited. Its ok to call things screensavers, because screensavers are also cool, its just that it isnt art in the sense of "art" the word, if an AI is doing it, its something else, and making it unlimited is not interesting, it is irresponsible. Its the constraints that make art what it is, not simply the definition of an infinite possibility space
- fobdkbfjh 5y agoIf you're going to gatekeep what art can be, you better have some pretty impressive creative credentials of your own. Some people say "an unlimited edition is meaningless, has no value" and all they really mean is "I'm conservative, I don't see the point of change, and I can't think of any way an unlimited edition could be interesting"
- LegitShady 5y agoHaving a different opinion isn't gatekeeping, it's disagreeing. No one is stopping this person from doing what they want. Second, if your definition of art is unlimited, it's hardly useful, so I don't think it matters.
- mrits 5y agoIt certainly isn't unlimited. It is confined by resolution and color depth.
- swayvil 5y agoWe could call art, "made-objects that get you high with beauty" We could also call art, "byproducts of artistic (beauty-guided) action"
- xrd 5y agoThis is awesome. Is the StyleGAN code removed (to keep it private)? I see this commit message: "Remove my ML stuff." I'm interested in understanding the StyleGAN if you are open to sharing it.
- mfi 5y agoThanks! Yeah, I removed it as I want people to use their own generative art in their own build. But if you're interested, here's the implementation I used: https://github.com/taki0112/StyleGAN-Tensorflow https://github.com/taki0112/StyleGAN-Tensorflow
- xrd 5y agoI'm struggling a little bit with using StyleGANs so far. Are you available for a (paid if you prefer) call where I ask you a few questions about it? If so, xrdawson@gmail.com. (I have a connection to Sweden, by the way. My brother lived in Eskilstuna in high school. So, I learned a little bit of Swedish when I visited him. His host brother thought it was really weird I met him and said "jag heter Chris, jag älska naturen!"). But, I would not feel comfortable talking to you in Swedish about StyleGAN. :) ).
- mfi 5y agoI've sent you an email :)
- Animats 5y agoNow have it automatically issue one NFT every few minutes. Profit!
- oxinabox 5y agoI love how this read me is as much about woodwork as it is about software
- mfi 5y agoI truly enjoy working on projects that includes both areas, interesting tech and woodwork :)
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoFirst, I would like to say well done. Not just the project -- it is neat. I particularly appreciate the fact that it includes all the less obvious, to me, pieces like building appropriate box, sanding and so on. I wish more projects were like this ( as in, showed most of the steps ).
- mfi 5y agoThanks, I appreciate it! I really enjoy writing these guides for others to learn, it forces me to think more about the process :) If you liked this one, I've also written another guide where I built a full-size arcade machine from scratch: https://github.com/maxvfischer/DIY-arcade https://github.com/maxvfischer/DIY-arcade
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nelsnelson 5y agohttps://i.imgur.com/vpBRAjJ.png https://i.imgur.com/vpBRAjJ.png
- lurker619 5y agoWould it have been easier to generate these images on some cloud gpu and stream/send the images to a smart tv? To avoid building and fabricating all the hardware components?
- henearkr 5y agoMaybe a stupid question, but why the Samsung connect box if the Jetson already has a HDMI output?
- mfi 5y agoIf I remember correctly, The Frame 32" only has a One Connect cable connection on the back. The reason is that you won't get the flat TV-to-wall surface otherwise.
- lazlee 5y agoI'm curious about, beyond time and labor, how much $$$ the project ran you.
- itronitron 5y agoWorth considering that you could purchase a very good painting from a local artist or gallery for much less than the money and time that was spent on this project. While I get that this is a fun project, an actual work of art will provide much more enrichment over the many years that it will outlive an AI art installation.
- mdoms 5y agoI build my own furniture. It costs me more than something I could buy of equivalent or better quality. That's not the point.
- Kiro 5y agoI prefer this over any static art.
- fksadfji12 5y agolol
- dvtrn 5y agoIncredible thing about art is that people value it differently and for different reasons, so maybe the idea of "enrichment" isn't something universal?
- ggggtez 5y agoI like the idea, but the art is meh.
- reacharavindh 5y agoAs cool as this is, I have been struggling to find a good non-AI digital photo display for my house. The common ones you can buy as “digital photo frame” on Amazon sucks in image quality. I would like a minimalistic digital photo display that is colour accurate, hidpi, preferably have a way to store a handful of hi res images(if not, Adding a Pi-zero for this is still okay). Oh I am not so rich or hosting an art gallery or anything, so, it must be less than 700 bucks(the cost of an iPad). I don’t understand why such a thing doesn’t exist already.
- quickthrower2 5y agoWhat about an android tablet?
- slobot 5y agoI did something like this for an install using cheap 10" android tablets and kiosk software I found on the app store. Worked like a charm. ** https://slobots.com/2019/01/gallery-view-i-love-my-robot-at-louise-jones-brown-gallery.html https://slobots.com/2019/01/gallery-view-i-love-my-robot-at-...
- linguistbreaker 5y agoCheck out 77 Million Paintings by Brain Eno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77_Million_Paintings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77_Million_Paintings
- lucidrains 5y agouse CLIP to generate a title for each piece of art, followed by a description with GPT, and it is ready for exhibition
- artur_makly 5y agoa possible next step > add a motion sensor to *swipe fwd/back the artworks. using a smooth pixel morphing blended transition. *or when toilet flushes ;-)
- artur_makly 5y agoThis reminds me a lot of this Japanese Product/Service: https://frm.fm/overview https://frm.fm/overview
- mrtweetyhack 5y agothis is just proof that any splash of shit is abstract art
- nine_k 5y agoThis says a lot about building MDF housing for a Jetson (BTW why not plywood?), and devotes literally half a dozen pretty generic lines to the actual art generation code. The algorithm is not discussed, and even art examples are not shown. This is sad, because wooden box building guides are abundant, but art generation guides are less so,
- didntknowya 5y agogreat write up.
- slobot 5y agoAs an artist and an avid reader of HN, I find this both fascinating and terrifying (!) at the same time. Before I started painting robots, I painted abstracts and was heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism. The images that your AI are generating (creating?!) are really cool. Equally as cool is that the images are deleted once a new one is generated, because a lot of the famous artists destroyed or painted over old works.
- ioseph 5y agoNon tech nitpick: biscuit joining a box made out of mdf seems like massie overkill when plain old wood glue would have absolutely sufficed.
- student2k 5y agois there a desktop wallpaper version?
- bupticybee 5y agoReally fun stuff, perhaps you should use a computer screen instead of producing one
- ekulianova 5y agoLooks very cool! I think there may be a demand for that!
- Aurum197 5y agoBrilliant: the project itself but also the trouble you took to share the how-to deets!