The painting by Bulgarian artist Albena Baeva is from the series 'Dangerous Female Creatures Living in the Deep'.
With the support of Telilab
at Sofia University of Technology, the artist was training a
self-learning program, styleGAN, with datasets of over 60,000 images
from the Internet. The datasets included images of women, fashion shots,
and images of creatures from the sea. The artificial intelligence
network is trained to produce images that resemble the training
material. The lack of homogeneity in the training material causes the
network to develop images that blend basic elements of the different
image worlds.
These mixed creatures from an unknown, artificially generated image world in turn serve the artist as sketches for a series of paintings. In the painterly process, the images of women and creatures living in the deep develop a quality all their own. They become portraits, representations of women that address themes such as body image and self-perception, beauty, and perfection.