Gallery audio transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to the Museum of Black Arts, Design, and Technology!

Our current exhibit is entitled, “Black Arts and Culture: Dancing Sculptures, Artificial Intelligence, and Design in Carnival.” It showcases AI generated designs for Dancing Sculptures in the Trinidad Carnival. In this gallery, there are three moving images. One at front, a second on the back wall, and the third in the lounge, just off the main gallery space. We encourage you to take screenshots of these moving images and share them on Instagram. Tag us at #carnivalai In the lounge are photos of 3 master wire-benders – Narcenio ‘Senior’ Gomez, Albert Bailey, and Stephen Derek. Before you proceed with the exhibit, I would like to orient you and tell you more about the exhibition. I’ll tell you about the Trinidad Carnival, dancing sculptures, and artificial intelligence.

So, what is the Trinidad Carnival?
The Trinidad Carnival is about creativity, resistance, and joy. French planters introduced Carnival to Trinidad in the 1780s, but Africans, the Spanish, British, and free people of color shaped it. When slavery was abolished in 1834, formerly enslaved Africans reinvented the carnival as a form of resistance celebrating their freedom, expressing their creativity, and aesthetic sensibilities [1]. While Europeans participated in Carnival for “fun and frolic,” for Africans, it was religion and a “psychological release of tensions” from segregation, oppression, and violent white systems of control [2]. The term Trinidad Carnival does not define the geographic location of the Carnival, but instead its origin and the main elements that define the carnival. The three main elements that define the Trinidad Carnival are mas’, calypso, and steelpan [3]. Mas being the masquerade. Calypso is the music and rhythm native to Trinidad, and the steelpan (steel drum) is a musical instrument invented in the 1930s in Trinidad and Tobago by the African working class from discarded oil drums. More than 70 diasporic carnivals have spawned from the Trinidad Carnival to other parts of the globe. The Carnival is a space of joy, creativity, resistance, celebration, education, and more.
  
This exhibition is about dancing sculptures. What are dancing sculptures?
Dancing sculptures are what we call Kings and Queens of Carnival in Trinidad & Tobago. These large kinetic sculptures can be up to 20 feet tall, are designed and built by individual and communities and performed by masqueraders in design competitions. One craft integral to making and design in carnival since the 1930s is the craft of wire-bending.

What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence or AI leverages computers and algorithms to mimic problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. Machine Learning is a sub-field of AI that enables machines to improve with experience.
 
This project explores three questions:
1. How might we use AI and machine learning to generate and circulate Black cultural heritage and value?
2. How might we showcase our history, creativity, and innovations with artificial intelligence?
3. How might new generations get introduced to design and the Trinidad Carnival through artificial intelligence?

In this exhibit, we use machine learning as a creative partner in designing dancing sculptures for Carnival. All the designs in this exhibition have been generated using StyleGAN, a Style-based generator that generated new design possibilities based on data it has been given. The data is a dataset of dancing sculptures. StyleGAN is a machine learning concept or model. GAN stands for generative adversarial network.  

And I now welcome you to continue to enjoy the gallery exhibition.
I would like to remind you of the three moving images. One at the front, another at the back, and a 3rd just off the main gallery space in the lounge. Please take screenshots of these designs as they emerge and share them on Instagram. Tag them #carnivalai
Don’t forget to visit our Virtual J’ouvert, Virtual Mas, and social space to continue the experiences and interactions. Explore and enjoy the exhibition! Sign our Guest Book! 

References:
[1] Brown, Ernest D. 1990. “Carnival, Calypso, and Steelband in Trinidad.” The Black Perspective in Music 18 (1/2): 81–100.
[2] Liverpool, Hollis Urban. “Origins of Rituals and Customs in the Trinidad Carnival: African or European?” TDR (1988-) 42, no. 3 (October 1, 1998): 24–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1146677
[3] Martin, Carol. “Trinidad Carnival Glossary.” TDR (1988-) 42, no. 3 (October 1, 1998): 220–35.
https://www.nalis.gov.tt/Resources/Subject-Guide/Carnival
https://www.fashionprojects.org/blog/1933
The Bailey-Derek Grammar – https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2810177.2810182