The Convolutional Turn

From Deep Dream to FaceApp, Prisma to AlphaGo, deep learning has burst into the cultural sphere in the last two years. Anil Bawa-Cavia’s talk will provide an overview of its development as a specific set of techniques in machine learning, demystifying its capacities and exploring its impact and potential in the realm of art production. 

Proceeding through a series of case studies taken from contemporary art and computer science research, the talk will look beyond the surface aesthetics of deep learning, to the questions it raises about agency, knowledge, and power.

Anil Bawa-Cavia is a computer scientist with a background in machine learning. He runs a speculative software studio, STDIO. His practice engages with algorithms, protocols, encodings, and other software artefacts. 

The lecture is part of Prof. Matteo Pasquinelli’s course »The Symbolic Forms of Neural Computations« at HfG.