IVONA TAU


Dr. Ivona Tau is a generative A.I. artist from Vilnius, Lithuania, who works with neural networks and code as a medium in experimental photography and motion painting. Her goal is to find and evoke emotions through artificially intelligent tools. She creates universally relatable memories by transforming her experiences captured on analog and digital film through generative neural networks (GAN).

Tau comes from the intersection of arts and technology, with 15 years of combined experience in professional photography and A.I. research. She was awarded the best award in the Digital Ars 2020 contest for art created with AI, the Computer Animation category award in Computer Space International Computer Art Forum 2021, and elected as one of the TOP 10 Women in AI 2022 by the Women in Tech Foundation.

Tau’s work has been exhibited widely, including Art Basel Miami Beach, SCOPE, CAFA, Art Week Shenzhen, Vellum, Bitforms New York, Venus Over Manhattan, The House of Fine Art, Bright Moments Berlin, and Sotheby’s New York. 

Ivona Tau is active in the research community and holds a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. She published multiple scientific papers in the field of Computer Vision and Artificial Neural Networks.


“She was a machine-hearted”

11 unique NFT works, each accompanied by a unique print, will be auctioned on the 18th of October at 5 pm with a minimum reserve. At the Art Salon "Node to Node", we'll showcase a special preview work: a painting on canvas accompanied by an NFT

'She was a machine-hearted' is a curated selection, born from Ivona Tau's previous long-form project 'Machine-hearted.' While originating from the realm of 'Machine-hearted,' these 11 works take on a fresh and profoundly feminine dimension. They evoke contemplation about the < silent suffering > experienced by women, encompassing the myriad emotions they bury deep within due to the stigma associated with issues like endometriosis, PCOS, infertility, and postpartum depression. Society often imposes the expectation that women must conceal these emotions, leading to a silent fracture of their inner selves as they strive to embody qualities of independence, success, and confidence.

The curated pieces serve as a means of giving voice to these suppressed emotions, offering a literal interpretation driven by artificial intelligence. They shed light on the intricate emotional states marked by feelings of brokenness, shattering, and being torn apart. In doing so, 'She was a machine-hearted' becomes a poignant exploration of the hidden and often unspoken struggles that women face, providing a platform for the expression of these complex and deeply personal experiences.

“ Machine-hearted" BY Ivona Tau - 100 ITERATIONS - 17th OF JUNE

This collection explores the complex umbrella of what feels intuitive to humans yet is challenging to interpret or analyze for machines and algorithms. In scientific research, there are usually only seven emotions (happy, sad, angry, neutral, scared ...). Still, it’s difficult for us to imagine feeling only one kind of emotion with our entire essence. What we mostly experience is an unexpected, conflicting combination of many elements. Emotion, the most primitive part of human essence, is also surprisingly difficult to analyze for machines. The AI systems still struggle with emotion classification even though they have established ground-breaking success elsewhere.

This project is an artist’s attempt to explore the large AI model’s strengths and shortcomings in expressing complex human emotions in visual form. The data it was trained on has many biases and stereotyped emotional expressions, but can it also capture some more nuanced human feelings? Or is our emotion reflected in the stone-cold interpretation of the machine? And our mind becomes the medium for the sentiment to materialize.

Finally, the works are about the dissonance we might feel when reality does not conform to our expectations when it conflicts with our emotions. Can emotion ever be Artificial?

"Machine-Hearted" will be presented on June 17, 2023, on https://0kai.k011.com.




Ivona Tau, WHISPERS (in code) #20