In February 2016, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts and Research at Google held a benefit auction and art exhibition of artworks made using artificial neural networks followed by a day of open forums on machine learning.

“The role of the artist is to amplify their message. It’s natural to…look for new ways to push that message.” —  Matt Ganucheau, Gray Area.

“Art and computation are entering a new renaissance. People have — over the last 20, 30, 40 years — tried in different ways to do creative things with art and specifically with machine learning. I think we’re providing genuinely new tools for artists to work with and I want to be here to watch how it unfolds.” —  Doug Eck, Google Research.

“In addition to being a really cool art show, this is also the inaugural event of a collaboration that we are launching at Google between scientists, researchers, engineers, artists, thinkers — that we are calling ‘artists and machine intelligence.’ This is really a beginning and a seed, and something that that we hope is going to be going on for a long time.” — Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google Research.

“What’s interesting about the pieces in the show is that they’re curated by somebody who knows how to write lines of code for computer…they are curating what the computer is going to create as art. So you have art that is a co-creation between a neural network and a coder. What comes out, I think, is a magical.” —  Fabienne Serrière, KnitYak.

“I think that the best kind of art comes from a dialogue between the creator and the medium. Just because I set up a camera and a hit record does that make me a creator? Does that make the camera the creator? It’s that tension that makes great art.” —  Jessica Brillhart, Google Virtual Reality.

Gray Area has always been about bringing together all different sorts of genres and mediums. And that’s why we’re called Gray Area. It’s about the intersection of art and technology, and letting go of genres and unlocking art and innovation through our work. —  Josette Melchor, Gray Area.

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