AI and the Intimate Art of Hannu Töyrylä
Explorations of AI Art — Episode 21
Beth Jochim, Director and Co-Founder at Cueva Gallery. Twitter: @_bblurred
“ I always had a need for the kind of self-expression that is associated with art.” Hannu Töyrylä.
Hannu Töyrylä is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland, who makes video, interactive installations and art prints using Artificial Intelligence. His work revolves around recurring themes, such as the contemplation of his emotional, psychological, and spiritual world, his life experience, and the complexity of our times. As he explained to me, his interest is not in machines as autonomous creators, but in approaching AI as an augmentative tool of expression.
Töyrylä speaks of himself as a non-AI purist. Indeed, a distinctive feature of his art is the mix of manual work and image processing code, starting for example from photography. His unique background combines a M.Sc. degree in applied electronics and telecommunications at Helsinki University of Technology, a PhD in Jewish Studies at the Theological Faculty of Åbo Akademi University, and an artistic path that spans from music to literature to visual arts.
His art moves from a visceral, almost existential need for self-expression, and it is precisely through art that he seeks to connect the constituent components of its identity with the world. Building his tools, and the materials from which to draw inspiration (i.e., small datasets), helps the artist to connect with his work, accentuating his feeling of belonging to it.
Moving from a human-centric conception of art, Töyrylä develops a very personal approach to neural art, alternating a transformative process with a generative one and finding a balance between discovery and control. Trying to develop a gut feeling with his neural networks, his practice leans toward exploration and experimentation.
Full interview on Cueva Gallery’s website: https://cuevagallery.com/blogs/explorations-of-ai-art/hannu
