Art Museum Basel - a new experience thanks to artificial intelligence

With almost forty museums and a rich cultural offerings, Basel largest cultural centers in Europe . In the time of digitization , the Art Museum Basel, which expands its range of exhibitions with artificial intelligence, stands out.

But what is artificial intelligence , what does visitors in the Basel Art Museum expect and how does artificial intelligence change the future of the art world?

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence, short KI or AI (Artificial Intelligence), understands to recreate the function of human brain and spirit with computers. In this way, the computer should be equipped with intelligence, finding answers yourself and solving problems independently.

Many people connect with artificial intelligence robots, such as the Android “Data” from the SCI-Fi series “Star Trek”, but in everyday life we ​​mostly meet AI in connection with our laptops, smartphones and tablets. We can talk to “Siri” on the cell phone and Amazon's algorithm recommends new and relevant products to us independently. Such examples of artificial intelligence are referred to as “weak AI”. You have no awareness, empathy or understanding and find answers to special questions independently.

In contrast to a program in which every step is inevitable and is based on certain rules, an algorithm is written for AI that is able to create individual steps itself. The AI ​​itself does not write a code for this, but changes certain parameters within the code in order to recognize and use patterns in the data fed in.

AI in the Kunstmuseum Basel

A visit to Basel is worthwhile not only because of the numerous historical buildings , but also because of the lively art scene . Here you should bring time and at best rent a holiday home close to the city so that Basel and the surrounding area can be explored in peace.

The Kunstmuseum Basel is definitely a special highlight. As one of the first art houses, the museum for the exhibition “The Incredible World of Photography” took advantage of artificial intelligence.

Since 2020, the huge collection of pictures by Ruth and Peter Herzog, which includes the entire time and topic of analog photography and 20,000 pictures, has been experienced so new. Before that, only around 400 pictures could be made accessible on site.

The heart of the exhibition is located in the middle of the tour on a gigantic wall projection . There you can see the entire extent of the collection, because the entire scene is full of overlapping photographs. If visitors scan their museum embroidery at one of two scan stations, a random photography is enlarged. The algorithm then selects similar images that match and thus always generates new clusters and connections.

If a second museum embroidery is scanned, the algorithm brings together the two randomly chosen images, so that escape lines arise between two motifs of different times. Visitors can easily recognize parallels and differences.

How AI revolutionizes the art world

Artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in the future of the art world, because the collections of various museums and galleries are growing and it is becoming increasingly difficult to give interested access to the variety of different works of art.

Algorithms can respond to the individual needs of visitors and the individual exhibitions and thus help to create a low -threshold barrier to discover and enjoy art Nevertheless, the digital world will not replace physical exhibits, but only complement it.

Otherwise, the outlook options of AI systems in the art world are diverse and still hardly exhausted. With algorithms, information can be drawn from extensive data that people in their complexity could never grasp. This applies in particular to images, drawings, videos and other formats that have no uniform shape and therefore cannot be searched by programs. For example, AI could be used to check works of art for their authenticity.

In the future, AI systems could also welcome visitors, give them information about individual works of art or entire collections and answer their questions as a whole. In particular, the support of visually impaired people is conceivable, because AI robots and computers can provide detailed image descriptions and the appropriate facts, so that exhibitions are also relevant for target groups that were previously disadvantaged.

The future of artificial intelligence in art

For many artists and art lovers, artificial intelligence and “real” art seem to clash like two opposites that simply don't want to go together.

As in many other areas, digitization also ensures uncertainty in the art world. People fear for their jobs and quite a few fear the irrational fear that the machines will slip away at some point and develop a conscious life of their own.

But in art, too, people and machines belong together in the future inseparable, and not only because people alone do not have the skills and resources to collect, organize and access all the works of art of a species. Like smartphones and laptops, AI systems are also to be understood as tools that support us and simplify data-related tasks.

AI will never wipe out jobs in the art world, but rather change for the positive. The amount of data that pours out on us these days also means in many professional fields in the art world that people are more busy with analysis and processes than the actual core of their work.

AI enables many professions to concentrate on the essentials and to turn to complex tasks that demand human consciousness instead of simple routines that can also be adopted by AI systems.

For art museums and galleries, KI opens up a whole new way to demonstrate works of art and to prepare information about art. This creates a new exciting access to art, which also attracts target groups that have so far shown less interest in art and its history. The interaction with works of art becomes more playful and contemporary.

If you are interested in artificial intelligence in the context of art, you can now experience AI in various plastics in Switzerland and Germany.

These include, for example, the House of Electronic Arts in Basel with the exhibition “Entangled Realities - Living with Artificial Intelligence” , in which it is examined how AI affects social life.

In the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the subject of AI and AI art critically examined from different perspectives as part of “Das Intelligent Museum” with various approaches of AI-based digital art

German Museum Bonn also become an experience in artificial intelligence with the “Mission Ki”