Celebrating the Winning Entries: Highlights from the AI & Art Competition

The AI & Art competition we ran as part of the CDT Showcase event brought together a fantastic array of talent and creativity, with participants impressing us with their outstanding submissions. We were thrilled to see some innovative approaches and unique perspectives reflected in each entry and are excited to highlight the winning entries that stood out among the rest.

1^st Place: Romy Williamson-The convergence of perception
This piece shows a series of stone busts arranged in a figure. The busts blend smoothly between a perfect sphere, Max Planck, and Igea – the Greek Goddess of Health.
In order to blend smoothly between the busts, I converted the meshes into Spherical Neural Surfaces (read my paper or listen to my talk to find out more) and I optimised a smooth neural map between the two domain spheres, minimising the conformal distortion energy using a variant of the First Fundamental Form.
Romy Comment: the convergence of perception (as named by ChatGPT)
I used our novel shape representation (Spherical Neural Surfaces) to represent the heads of Max Planck and the goddess Igea (converted from meshes), and performed a geometric optimization to find a nice correspondence (diffeomorphism), which then allowed me to interpolate to get the in-between heads.
 This is my paper about Spherical Neural Surfaces: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07755 . The geometric optimization part is similar to Neural Surface Maps (https://geometry.cs.ucl.ac.uk/projects/2021/neuralmaps/).

2^nd Place:Reuben Adams – Nook 
The colours in this photo have been subtly changed to encode an audio file of a crackling fireplace, which in turn has been imperceptibly altered to encode a text file of Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush. The work telescopes into one image a dreary and wet walk through the peak district, warming by the fire, and thoughts of an old friend.

 

3^rd Place: Pedro José Ferreira Moreira-UCL Summer School
Welcome to ‘UCL Summer School,’ an exciting comic book adventure that follows a young student on their thrilling journey at University College London Summer School!

Imagine being able to create a whole comic book without knowing how to draw – thanks to AI, that’s exactly what happened here! From packing bags and boarding a plane to sightseeing around London and attending cool AI seminars, this comic capturers every moment with vibrant, dynamic art.
What AI Can Do: AI makes it possible to turn your wildest ideas into reality, even if you can’t draw a stick figure. It helps craft detailed and expressive comic panels that perfectly match the story in your head. Plus, AI is like a super-fast sidekick, helping to create everything in no time!
The Not-So-Great Parts: Sometimes, AI might miss the mark on capturing those deep, personal emotions or might not get the scene just right without some help. It’s great, but it’s not a mind reader – yet!
The Future Is Bright: Imagine a world where AI tools are even more creative, intuitive, and just plain fun to use. We’re talking about easier ways to blend human creativity with AI’s power, making art that’s truly one-of-a-kind.

In ‘UCL Summer School’ you’ll see how AI can turn anyone into a comic book creator, expressing thoughts and stories in a vibrant way that’s never been easier. This comic is all about having fu, exploring new tech and realizing that with a little help from AI, the sky’s the limit for your creativity!
Pedro’s Comments. The motivation behind this comic book art is simple: to show that creativity shouldn’t be limited by technical skills. With the help of AI, anyone can turn their ideas into reality, no matter their experience. Even if you’re “not good at drawing,” you can bring your imagination to life. Sure, the technology isn’t perfect (extra fingers popping up in the art can be a funny surprise), but it’s more than enough to convey emotion and tell captivating stories

4^th Place: Kai Biegun-In With The New
This piece aims to convey a juxtaposition of retro analogue photography and state of the art AI image generation. Four film photos were taken on various film stocks with vintage analogue cameras, and descriptions of those images were used to generate four corresponding photos with the Adobe Firefly image generation suite. I have always felt that the grainy, textured look of film photographs gives them a certain quality that makes looking at them feel like you’re looking at a snapshot from a memory. This is in stark contrast to the saturated, ultra-smooth, somewhat cartoonish look of AI generated photos. I believe this speaks to the fact that, although we are moving towards a world where digital and AI generated media are the norm, there is still place for the analogue to provide a window into real moments, memories, and experiences.
Kai’s comments. The piece is a study of the differences between images captured with analogue cameras and images generated by AI, whereby the analogue photographs were recreated by generative AI by prompting it with a text description of each image. It aims to highlight not just the superficial differences in colour, texture, and subject, but also the difference in feeling one gets from knowing how each image was captured, and question whether that in itself contributes to the artistic merit of the images.

5^th Place: Roberta Chissich-Forest Escape.
Materials Used: Blender 4.1, ANT Landscape Addon, Node Wrangler Addon, Cycles Render Engine, Sapling Tree Gen Addon, Poly Haven Textures.

The Interactive Forest Environment is a meticulously crafted 3D scene designed to immerse viewers in a realist natural landscape. This piece leverages advanced procedural techniques and tools within Blender, reflecting the growing intersection of AI and art in the digital age.

Blender’s geometry nodes and procedural generation tools were extensively used to create the ground and vegetation layouts. These nodes enable the creation of complex, natural-looking terrains and distributions with minimal manual intervention. This results in highly detailed and varied environments without the need for manual modelling of each element. The use of procedural shaders and texture blending techniques in Blender mimics AL-assisted methods to combine ground textures from Poly Haven seamlessly, ensuring enhanced detail and natural transitions.

To optimize rendering, the Cycles Render Engine utilizes NVIDIA’s AI-accelerated denoising technology. OptiX reduces noise in rendered images, significantly speeding up the rendering process while maintaining high-quality visuals. This integration of AI technology helps in producing clean, detailed renders with fewer samples, making the workflow more efficient.

This artwork is inspired by the calming and restorative qualities of nature. It aims to transport viewers to a serene forest environment, providing a momentary escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, capturing the essence of nature’s tranquility.
Roberta’s comments. This animated river scene, created in Blender, showcases the power of combining human creativity with advanced tools. By using OptiX rendering, the video achieves a higher level of visual fidelity, capturing the intricate details of light and water. The use of procedural scattering has simplified the placement of grass, leaves, and trees, making the natural landscape come to life effortlessly.
My motivation for this piece comes from the belief that art and technology are not in opposition, but are powerful allies; AI-enhanced tools can aid artists in their creative process. This artwork embodies the idea that we can use these innovations to elevate our creative expression. It’s not about replacing human artistry, it’s about how these tools can help us amplify our imagination, making the impossible possible, and turning complex visions into reality. Together, we can craft a future where human spirit and technological prowess unite to create beauty.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Each entry brought something special to the event and helped create a vibrant and memorable experience for all involved!