Anna Ridler — Myriad (Tulips) and Mosaic Virus

2018

Artists: Anna Ridler · Year: 2018 · Medium: AI artwork — GAN trained on hand-photographed tulip dataset · Substrate: 10,000 photographs of tulips taken by Ridler over multiple weeks; GAN trained on the dataset; output as video and print · Place: London, UK · Institution: Independent; Barbican commission (Mosaic Virus) For Myriad (Tulips), completed in 2018, Anna Ridler photographed ten thousand tulips — sourced from a Dutch supplier, photographed individually against the same background, labeled by variety and date — and then trained a GAN on the dataset to produce new, non-existent tulip images. The artwork is two things simultaneously: the grid of ten thousand source photographs, tagged and arranged as a visible dataset, and the GAN's endless generation of tulips that never existed. The point is not the AI output, exactly; it is the labor of the dataset. Ridler's argument — which she has articulated consistently across her subsequent work — is that machine-learning research conventionally hides the human labor of dataset construction behind the apparent autonomy of the trained model. By photographing every tulip herself and presenting the dataset alongside the generated output, she makes the hidden labor visible. Every AI image has this shadow of uncredited human work; Ridler's piece refuses to let the work stay shadowed. Mosaic Virus (2019) extends the tulip project with commercial art-market commentary: the GAN-generated tulips appear on a market whose valuations reference 17th-century Dutch Tulip Mania, the first documented speculative bubble. The conceptual layering is dense and specific. Ridler is based in London and has continued working at the intersection of AI, labor, and ecology. She is one of the most thoughtful critics of AI art within AI art. Lore Ridler photographed the tulips over a period of weeks at a Dutch flower market, hand-labeling each one with variety and date. The dataset is approximately 10,000 images. Her subsequent work includes Laws of Ordered Form (2020) on classical ornamentation, and continued writing on AI's labor and ethical implications. The Barbican commissioned Mosaic Virus for their 2019 AI: More than Human exhibition. Sources • Ridler, Anna — annaridler.com archive • Barbican — AI: More than Human exhibition catalog (2019) • Ridler, Anna — essays in Right Click Save and elsewhere