For their Creative Challenge this year, Replyers were asked to create a generative art project from scratch over a period of 48 hours. Generative art, described as “collaboration between the computer and the artist”, is about using any sort of data (image, textual or audio) and AI to generate a unique form of art. Of course, Data Reply could not resist signing up a team for this data-based challenge.
Though separated due to lockdown, the team of four worked together through the weekend to research, conceptualise, realise, and present their project. The team liaised constantly to connect the different dots of the pipeline together with Perumal and Pavi, tirelessly working on the implementation of the Neural Style Transfer mapping whilst Nikhil and Nikita working on data preparation and to emphasise on both the overall creativity and business value of their idea.
And there was a lot of creativity and market value to discuss. The idea involved using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) driven style mapping to display various patterns on clothing (though it need not be limited to clothing) – and then taking a step further by generating new patterns by merging pre-existing ones too. Not only is this useful for retailers & designers to automate their designing work flows by facilitating a better visualisation of the end product, before having to invest in creating and manufacturing them, this is also extremely useful for consumers, especially in an increasingly virtual market. A retail business can gain a lot more trust if the consumer can see what their purchase will look like before purchasing it – whether it be custom-made clothing on themselves, or unique forms of wall-art for home decor.
After an intense weekend, the Data Reply team submitted their work, proud of what they submitted and ready to relax – but only until their next challenge!