Our installation Augenblick (“blink of an eye”) explored new forms of interaction between creative humans and machines. The interplay gives rise to the phenomenon of emergent creativity, where something new and unexpected comes to life: a creative interaction, where the whole is larger than the sum of its parts.

Embedded in the Silbersalz Science and Media Festival, we installed Augenblick in the courtyard of the medieval Moritzburg in Halle. Behind a stage area we set up a large LED screen, and installed an array of retired smartphones as wireless streaming cameras. The cameras not only pointed to the stage and the audience, but we also installed them in a giant eyeball, the “eye of the AI”. With this eye, performers and the audience could seek further forms of interaction within the courtyard of Moritzburg. The videos were streamed into deep neural networks running on a supercomputer, which creatively reinvented the environment and reflected it back on the display. In collaboration with the Silbersalz Festival, the installation featured various performances on the stage: ranging from a clown performance over a tango flashmob to DJ sets, we featured four days of performances. In between the events, we invited the public to interact with the installation.

Contributing Lunar Ring Members: Niklas Fricke, Mirko Franjic, Alexander Loktyushin, Johannes Stelzer, Maximilian Leibiger