Playing on the gallery's corner window screen, Critically Extant is a project that explores just how little we know about the natural world by testing the limits of the data openly available to us in our digital lives.

To achieve this, A.I. algorithms were trained on millions of open source images of nature and some ten thousand species. The resulting models were then used to generate visual representations of species that are critically endangered, yet have little or no online presence.

Alongside Critically Extant, we are also presenting Coelopidium by Entangled Others Studio, an augmented reality artwork produced as part of Artificial Remnants, an ongoing exploration of artificial life using deep learning to generate insects as well as their names and anatomical descriptions.

Biography

Sofia Crespo is an artist working with a huge interest in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object.

Crespo looks at the similarities between techniques of AI image formation, and the way that humans express themselves creatively and cognitively recognize their world. Her work brings into question the potential of AI in artistic practice and its ability to reshape our understandings of creativity. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques.

She’s also the co-founder of Entangled Others Studio, the shared studio practice of artists Feileacan McCormick and Sofia Crespo. Their work focuses on ecology, nature, and generative arts, with an emphasis on giving the more-than-human new forms a presence and life in digital space. This involves exploring questions of relationship, biodiversity, and awareness through biology-inspired technologies.

This project was made as part of the 'Meta AI Artists in Residence' program.

Critically Extant forms part of our programme of outdoor works in Soho Photography Quarter