Sofia Crespo — Neural Zoo and AI-generated biology

2019

Artists: Sofia Crespo · Year: 2019 · Medium: AI-generated imagery — neural networks trained on biological datasets producing non-existent organisms · Substrate: StyleGAN and subsequent GAN architectures; large biological image datasets (corals, insects, microorganisms); custom training pipelines · Place: Berlin, Germany / Argentina · Institution: Independent; later collaborations including with Feral File Sofia Crespo, Argentine-born and based in Berlin, has built one of the most consistent AI-art practices of the post-2019 period. Her Neural Zoo series trains neural networks on biological image datasets — photographs of corals, insects, microorganisms — to generate images of organisms that do not exist. The outputs are uncanny: they read unmistakably as living creatures, with the textural and morphological specificity of real biology, but none of them are real. The network has learned what biology looks like without learning what biology is. Crespo's argument across the Neural Zoo series is that AI image generation can produce a specific kind of aesthetic experience that is difficult to achieve by other means: the experience of looking at something that should exist but does not. Her outputs do not look like digital fabrications. They look like photographs from a just-barely-parallel natural-history museum. The work is conceptually adjacent to Anna Ridler's Myriad (Tulips), but with a different emphasis: where Ridler focuses on the labor of dataset construction, Crespo focuses on the perceptual experience of the generated output. Both approaches are valid; they produce different aesthetic effects. Crespo has continued to work at the intersection of AI and natural-history imagery, with her Entangled Others project (with Feileacan McCormick) extending the approach into immersive installations and NFT releases. She is a significant voice in AI-art practice, particularly in the Spanish-language art press. Lore Crespo was trained in Buenos Aires and moved to Berlin in the mid-2010s. Her Entangled Others collaboration with Feileacan McCormick has been acquired by the Centre Pompidou in its 2023 NFT acquisition. She has been an advocate for more critically-engaged uses of AI generation and has written in Spanish-language art press about the limits of the technology. Her work has been shown at MoMA, Ars Electronica, and Serpentine Gallery. Sources • Crespo, Sofia — sofiacrespo.com • Entangled Others (with McCormick) — entangledothers.studio • Feral File — Crespo exhibition records