Codex Virtualis is an artistic research framework oriented towards the generation of an evolving taxonomic collection of hybrid bacterial-AI organisms. With a subtle echo of endosymbiotic theory, we propose a symbolic formulation of a style transfer machine learning environment as a host in which to merge bacterial/archaea time-lapse microscopy footage along with multidimensional cellular automata computational models as endosymbionts, all under the orchestration of an autonomous generative non-adversarial network architecture. Our aim is to encounter novel algorithmically driven aesthetic representations tagged with a unique morphotype and genotype-like encoding, and that are articulated around a speculative narrative encompassing unconventional origins of life on earth and elsewhere.
Credits
This project is presented in the framework of the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, which is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.
