Event 2: Love Machines (MFA Showcase)

For my second event, I attended the 2024 MFA exhibition, Love Machines, in New Wight Gallery in the Broad Art Center. It was a gallery showcasing the work of UCLA MFA students focusing around the intersection of technology, machines, and art. There were a few pieces I found fascinating, though the entire exhibition was incredible. 


One of the pieces that stood out to me was Grace and I dancing separately together by Wantong Yao. The piece was about how machines learn and unlearn a three-legged race. 

The exhibition uses a machine learning technique, reinforcement learning, which mimics the trial-and-error learning process that humans use to achieve their goals. I was most intrigued by this piece because the idea of using reinforcement learning is almost metaphorical in the sense that the young character in her piece was attempting to detach herself from the older one, which represented people in older generations of her family by unlearning it's previous behaviors. It was a great piece that discussed generational trauma in a way I have never seen expressed before. 



As a data science major, we discuss a lot regarding machine learning and AI in our classes, but we never actually talk about artistic approaches. Overall, I was very impressed with the use of machine learning and other AI generated content in the art featured in the gallery-- it created internal conversation with myself regarding the applications of upcoming technology, and some of the work featured helped me to generate commentary regarding AI generated images and artwork.

I also wanted to shoutout my TA, Chong Xu's, piece, which featured robotic wet floor signs that momentarily sprayed water on the floor. I thought it was a very cool concept and the signs were very cute.


Works Cited

Bhatt, Shweta. “Reinforcement Learning 101. Learn the essentials of Reinforcement… | by Shweta Bhatt.” Towards Data Science, 19 March 2018, https://towardsdatascience.com/reinforcement-learning-101-e24b50e1d292. Accessed 17 May 2024.

“What Is Reinforcement Learning? - MATLAB & Simulink.” MathWorks, https://www.mathworks.com/discovery/reinforcement-learning.html. Accessed 17 May 2024.

“What is Reinforcement Learning? - Reinforcement Learning Explained.” AWS, https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/reinforcement-learning/. Accessed 17 May 2024.




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