Playing on the Saskatchewan license plate slogan, “Land of Living Skies,” GAN of Living Skies is a solar-powered machine learning system that produces landscape imagery from its environment. The project includes a machine-learning model, image database, and a customized computer that is integrated into a portable solar-power charging station (the “WaGAN”). The idea for the project arrived when we began living in Treaty 4 Territory, Regina, SK, as a way for us to connect and create in our new surroundings.
A GAN, or generative adversarial network, is the foundational technology for this project. Engaging with GAN allowed us to delve deeply into machine learning and perceive the resource-intensive processes behind industry hype.
We constructed a machine powered by the very skies that fascinated us, a machine that carefully watched these same skies in order to build an image database large enough to train our machine learning model. The more time GAN spends in the prairie landscape, the more refined the landscape images it produces. This process is both time- and resource-intensive, requiring the use of sophisticated hardware and the energy to run it. GAN’s reliance on solar energy mitigates its impact, and connects the process and subject matter in a reciprocal relationship.
Experience visions from GAN of Living Skies in an immersive video cube, downloadable from spekwork.itch.io