AI show of

AN experimental slide show visually depicting Ballarat’s past as interpreted by artificial intelligence is now on show in the central business district.

From now until White Night, the mezzanine screen at P. Frangos and Sons will be bearing the bizarre and sometimes sordid results of the project titled Macabre Stories of Ballarat – incorrectly interpreted by Artificial Intelligence.

The exhibition’s curator Peter Sparkman developed the idea earlier this month after experimenting with Meta AI software to generate an image featuring Doctor Who’s iconic TARDIS at the Eureka Stockade.

He said it’s been interesting to see the stories of Ballarat’s history filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence.

“Everything looks vaguely like Ballarat but not completely,” he said. “It sort of knows Town Hall but things are getting changed into something not quite right.

“I tried to get an image of Lola Montez doing her spider dance but instead it showed her with these massive spider legs. It all ends up like a dog’s breakfast visually.”

With about 300 slides on show, historic Ballarat events and figures become distorted and outrageous with compounded inputs and sequential errors.

“A few images down the track it’ll have something in there mentioned in a prompt from a previous image,” Sparkman said.

“There’s all these ones from the two times trams derailed and ran into the bottom of Sturt Street. The ground’s erupting, the buildings are on fire, and all of a sudden, kangaroos are there slaughtered in the street.

“There’s UFOs in there, there’s exploding volcanoes, it’s put Queen Elizabeth II in there when I wrote ‘queen of begonias.’ It’ll keep glitching on things like that.”

Sparkman said the show provides an interesting comment to add to the controversy surrounding the use of AI in art.

“We’ve all been talking for the last two years about AI from an artist’s point of view and it’s quite a volatile conversation,” he said.

“It’s nice to let people know AI fails a lot of the time in terms of visual image interpretation.

Sparkman plans to follow up his explorations of artificial intelligence with an event showcasing his collection of more than 4000 images of “failed” AI interpretations.

Macabre Stories of Ballarat – incorrectly interpreted by Artificial Intelligence is on show at 313 Sturt Street until Saturday 1 June.

Sparkman will be at P. Frangos and Sons tomorrow afternoon, Saturday 25 May, from 3pm to discuss the show with attendees.

The exhibition is recommended for people aged 16 and over due to some graphic content.