Author: jennyzha@andrew.cmu.edu

jennyzha – Looking Outwards 02

IBM’s Watson collaborated with Grammy Award-winning producer Alex Da Kid to create a “cognitive song.” I thought this was a really cool project since you don’t really associate music with artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, looking a little bit deeper you realize that the incorporation of Watson actually provided for even more opportunity as it uncovered unknown inspiration for artists.

To work with Watson, Watson first had to be fed millions of unstructured data points into emotional insights that would help create a new kind of music. To do so, Watson analyzed millions of songs, lyrics, and five years of natural language texts that would ultimately help to teach Watson what made a “good” song.

One large initiative Alex Da Kid wanted was to foster a deeper connection with is audience. Thus, Watson was taught the most significant cultural themes, using Watson Tone Analyzer to read news articles, blogs and tweets to find out what people felt about them. Analyzing years’ worth of popular music, Watson Tone Analyzer API read and ultimately created its own lyrics; while Cognitive Color Design Tool analyzed album art to create their song’s album art. Finally, Watson Beat looked at the composition of songs to generate a fully immersive experience for Alex da Kid.

https://www.ibm.com/watson/music/

jennyzha – looking outwords 01

Karolina Kurkova attends the 'Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology' Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

A particular computational project that I found to be inspiring was the Marchesa x IBM’s Watson dress collaboration for the Met Gala. While technology isn’t typically something one would associate with fashion or art, Marchesa and IBM were able to perfectly and harmoniously showcase their inspiration, and last year’s Met Gala’s theme, “Manus x. Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology”.

Cognitive Marchesa dress lights up the night

The “cognitive dress,” it was called, was covered in fabric flowers embedded with LED lights that changed color. While physically, the dress stayed true to Marchesa’s signature elegance, the dress also stayed true to Watson’s powerful analytical power. Prior to the gala, Watson analyzed social media around Marchesa, assigning different emotions of the posts to different colors (rose for joy, coral for passion, aqua for excitement, lavender for curiosity, and butter for encouragement).

The team included a portion of the IBM Watson team, as well as Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig of Marchesa beginning their process just 5 weeks before the gala. There were no prior projects similar to this so they were the pioneers, as they opened up opportunity for more innovation between fashion and technology.

jennyzha – project 01 – face

sketch

function setup() {
    createCanvas(600, 600);
}

function draw() {
    background(255);
 //hair   
    fill(0, 0, 0);
    ellipse(300, 400, 450, 700);
//face
    fill(237,221,105);
    ellipse(300, 350, 300, 400);

//eyes
    fill(0, 0, 0);
    ellipse(245, 300, 60, 40);
//eyes
    fill(0, 0, 0);
    ellipse(355, 300, 60, 40);
//eye rectangle
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill (237,221,105)
    rect(210,300, 70, 40);
//eye rectangle
    fill (237,221,105)
    rect(320, 300, 70, 40);
//mouth
    fill(226,43,42);
    ellipse(300, 450, 120, 120);
//mouthtongue
    fill(250, 80, 80);
    ellipse(300, 450, 100, 50);

//mouth rectangle
    strokeWeight(0)
    fill (237,221,105)
    rect(240,390, 125, 50);

//nose
    fill(0, 0, 0);
    ellipse(300, 350, 60, 40); 

    noLoop();
}

 

I went through a couple of sketches before ending up with my final draft. Originally I had only black and white shapes to create the foundation and finally added some color. I also enjoyed using more than one shape to create a single shape (i.e. the mouth and eyes are actually combinations of rectangles and ellipses and circles).