Art with Watson –
Hidden Portraits
How man sees machine is a well-documented subject. But what about how machine sees man?
We asked IBM Watson to show us through data analysis, and in doing that, he uncovered the true nature of seven of the world’s most profound thinkers–Charles Darwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, Paul Rand, Josephine Baker and Thomas J Watson.
The Making of Hidden Portraits
Fifteen artists collaborated with Watson, using insights only Watson could provide—to create an exhibition of portraits that told stories about these historical icons that had never been told before.
Watson found that the concepts in Darwin’s books on evolution resemble those behind many puzzles and board games. This led to the idea of evolution as a game itself– one that, when played to the end, allows us to discover something new and see how we’re all connected.
Watson uncovered that the famed inventor was really an artist at heart. Tesla’s conflicted, dual personas–the scientist and the artist–served as inspiration for this portrait. The mirrored cube represents Tesla’s mind, while the inner electric grid speaks to his fame as a well-known scientist. The generative art that comes alive inside the cube represents Tesla’s lesser-known artistic side.
Through the analysis of Josephine’s Baker’s writings, Watson discovered contradictions to her flamboyant persona. She ranked very low in extroversion, hedonism and excitement-seeking traits, while ranking extremely high in cautiousness. This indicates that this seemingly uninhibited chanteuse was in fact an introvert.
Watson’s analysis revealed that Rand displayed anger in his writings. Inspired by Rand’s playful designs, the artists created a work composed of customized emojis, reflecting the emotions Watson surfaced in Rand’s writings.
Hidden Portrait Exhibit Opening
Can a machine know people better
than they know themselves?
The Cognitive Photo Booth – a key attraction at the AI - inspired Art with Watson portrait exhibition–showed how Watson can reveal the person within.
Thousands of gallery guests queued up to chat with Watson, who then analyzed their answers to his questions using his Speech to Text and Tone Analyzer APIs, and created individual personality profiles.
With the trait percentages, the emoji distribution was determined and used to create a custom, poster-sized portrait for each guest in the form of a printed data visualization.
Each guest's personality profile was then presented as a custom, poster-sized portrait, in form of a data visualization, printed in minutes.
Hidden Portrait Landing page
