In 1950, Alan Turing wondered, “Can machines think?” and developed a test to find out. June 23 1912 was Turing’s birthday. On June 23 2016, the 26th annual Saatchi & Saatchi new Directors’ Showcase is being held at Cannes Lions.
So Saatchi & Saatchi will also present its own experiment, “Can machines be creative?”
The agency will screen a film conceived, edited and directed by machines to find out if it can make humans have an emotional response.
Ruairi Glynn, director, Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, is a practicing artist and academic specialising in the field of AI and robotics. He commented, “Alan Turing was the first person to ask the question ‘Can machines think?’, which then leads immediately to the question can machines be creative? We’ve begun to see machines making new and surprising things which are aesthetically compelling.
“The remaining big question of artificial creativity is whether the machine can understand the significance of the thing it has created? It’s interesting to explore the potential to build machines that simulate human intelligence but the really exciting future is developing new forms of creative intelligence quite unlike our own.”
Saatchi & Saatchi worked with Team One, S&S Los Angeles luxury and premium brand agency and Zoic Labs to assemble a cast of artificial intelligence, algorithms and machines the same way a studio would assemble a traditional film crew.
Several technologies were used in a first-ever combination to create the film from start to finish – IBM Watson, Microsoft’s Ms_Rinna, Affectiva’s facial recognition software, EEG data and a custom neural art program.
Andy Gulliman, NDS curator and producer explained, “When virtual reality seems to be the must-have toy of the moment, we wanted to look beyond and as a result became obsessed by the apparent capabilities of AI.
“Intrigued to know if AI could really support our creative needs and deliver to our creative standards, we needed to know the true capabilities of the machines so commissioned the experiment. Once we gave the go-ahead to the machine I quickly learnt that I had to relinquish my producer control to accommodate the production process dictated by the machines.”
Chris Graves, chief creative officer at Team One, added, “What defines a director? Twenty-five years ago, at the start of the New Directors’ Showcase, directors were a particular kind of person with a particular set of skills. But technology has been evolving that definition ever since. Now, new directors debut every day on online platforms like YouTube, Vine and Snapchat.”
During its 25-year history, the NDS has been the springboard for many well-known directors. The Showcase is also renowned for pushing boundaries creatively and artistically, and has gained a reputation for introducing new and emerging technologies to the stage. In 2015 Saatchi & Saatchi marked 25 years of the NDS with 25×25, a film created by NDS alumni including Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, Jake Scott and Michel Gondry. This year, it explores what the next 25 years might bring.
Kate Stanners, Worldwide creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi, noted. “How to build on 25 years of the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase and an archive of incredible directing talent, while producing a screening at the Palais des Festival in Cannes which lives up to our reputation as an agency on the frontier of technological and creative innovation? That’s the challenge that we faced this year, and we are rising to it by working with Team One in Los Angeles to explore how Artificial Intelligence and machines can be used to enhance human creativity, a subject that is on the creative radar right now.”
The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase takes place at 10am on Thursday 23 June at the Lumière Theatre in Cannes. Find out what’s on, where and when, here.