Tech giant NVIDIA, whose fortunes have rocketed withe the rise of crypto and AI, had its NVIDIA GTC (short for GPU Technology Conference) this week in Silicon Valley – kicked off with a rock concert-like keynote at a packed 18,000-seat pro sports arena.
There was a pile of news and insights about AI chips and GPUs, and plenty of infinitely more suitable online resources to read about that stuff, but what interested me was the pre-show before CEO Jensen Huang came out for his talk
The SAP Arena was set up with a huge stage for the keynote, backed by an equally huge screen – probably rental LED, but maybe projection. Ahead of the talk, the screen was used for a lengthy generative art piece from Refik Anadol – who is as much a rock star in generative art as Huang is in computing hardware.
Here is Anadol with Huang, probably before or after a dry run ahead of the keynote.
The shape-shifting piece is reminiscent of what Anadol produced for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This one used more than 500 million sourced images – working with Getty Images – and NVIDIA’s Picasso platform.
It is weirdly difficult to find much video, but here’s a couple of clips on Twitter/X.
Art-meets-tech at @NVIDIAGTC! 🎨✨ Watch Refik Anadol’s “Real Time AI Data Sculpture”, as shapes and textures dynamically form and dissolve, revealing intricate structures that defy completion 🦜🦉 Amazing GTC Keynote pre-show! pic.twitter.com/2FQhJzwZSa
— Claudia D’Arpino 🤖🧠 (@CPDArobotics) March 19, 2024
Poking around Linkedin got me a few still images of the show, dubbed Large Nature Model: Living Art.
