01.An order from Biot’s city hall.

We had the chance to be contacted by Biot’s city hall for the creation of a glass structure for the city. Biot is a town in the south of France, considered a central place in terms of culture and know-how, and particularly famous for its glassmakers. We had been there when we were young and had always admired the skills of these glassmakers. We were extremely happy to be contacted to create an art piece for the city, and decided we would try our best to bring together history and innovation for its creation.

"We had been there when we were young and had always admired the skills of these glassmakers"

Obvious

02. Mixing the history of glass sculpture and biot heritage

For the creation of this artwork, we used Generative Adversarial Networks on two separate databases of glass artworks. One of the databases was historical, and another one was a database gathered by the glassmakers of biot on their own work. After training separately on those two databases and generating a first series of results, we discussed with Biot’s glassmakers and decided to combine the databases to create something that would mix contemporary and historical results. Thanks to the process, we emerged with something entirely new.

The two artworks choosen in the results generated by our algorithms

03. Discovering a new craftsmanship

This collaboration was the occasion for us to discover a new way of creating. We got the chance to visit the Biot glass making place and to discover and understand the process of creating something from sand to a final glass piece. We also got the chance to exchange with the glassmakers on the process of creation of the piece we designed.

A video describing the production process

04. Exhibition in WAICF

We presented the piece at the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF). It was the occasion for us to give two presentations, one oriented on the piece we created for Biot, and another one on creating using artificial intelligence. Also, an occasion to go and visit the french southern sun !