This year Daniela Schwabe (1984 NL) worked on a special new series of paintings during her residencies in Leipzig in Berlin: DEEP FAMILY.
Memories, family history and the passing of time are important in Schwabe's work. In her earlier series she used collages of family photos as preliminary studies of her paintings.
In DEEP FAMILY, her visual memory of her family archive is transformed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
In collaboration with designer Casper Schipper, she developed a neural network that is trained with her own archive of photos to allow artificial intelligence to generate new family photos.
The deep learning process begins with nurturing formal family group portraits. Subsequently, the system gets to know increasingly 'more difficult' photos in steps; vacation photos, family gatherings and photos from everyday life. The result is a new fictional family with new genetic codes based on entered data. Schwabe went on to paint her new family in impressive and alienating portraits.
Arnon Grunberg on DEEP FAMILY: "Daniela Schwabe's work sheds just enough light on human darkness."