Afrodreams.

AI
A study of implicit bias in artificial intelligence art using the aesthetics of
Ùlì Art and Design System
2019 - Present
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Ikongio Jeremiah
www.jereikongio.com
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Short Summary

A Traditional and Contemporary African Art Dataset for training computer vision models,
starting with Nigerian arts and artists while also examining implicit biases in artificial intelligent
artworks, art practices and machine-human collaborations.

The project is a social scientific research into data labeling as an artistic process, using Images,
Text and Artificial Intelligence collecting and labeling thousands of African artworks for use as
dataset for training computer vision models.

Prototype: https://huggingface.co/spaces/AfrodreamsAI/afrodreams

With interests in missing archives, identity and infrastructures the project is engaging with
subliminal interactivity and negotiation in the real or virtual world through these West African
writing system (Uli), scripts (including Nsibidi, Adinkra), Esie soapstone sculptures and
Contemporary art in an attempt to blur the line between past, present and future.I will have
access to over 20,000 from the Esie Soapstone Museum, Kwara, Nigeria and Iwalewahaus
Museum, Bayreuth, Germany.

Project Description

The project addresses the creation, annotation, ethical use and timely availability of accurate
and clear information and data on contemporary and traditional art styles from Africa, providing
a backbone for fact finders tackling misinformation and disinformation as well as artists, AI and
data scientists exploring data collections while also addressing an important goal of reducing
inequalities.
The aim is to acquire thousands of images of African traditional and modern/contemporary art,
prepare the data, train a model on images to alter uploaded image files generating new Images
(jpg,tiff,png)

And/Or create a website that uses the available deep learning framework and selected images
(of Uli art and design) as style/base/background to alter uploaded jpeg files thereby generating
new Images (jpg,tiff,png).

The project will create a foundation by producing quality dataset for fact finders tackling
misinformation and disinformation as well as artists, AI and data scientists, developers and the
general public interested in or exploring data collections while also reducing digital inequalities.
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Prototype

Afrodreams.AI african style generation.

More African Style Generation

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Implementation

Adopting semi manual curation of images for the dataset the project will commence with 2
important styles of art (and include more subsequently) namely the Esie soapstone sculptures
and Úlí Art & Design System and The Nsibidi script.

1. Ùlì, Nsibidi and Adinkra Traditional Art and Design system

2. African contemporary artworks
3. Re-drawn basic Ùlì, Nsibidi and Adinkra signs, symbols and artworks as additional
annotated datasets

Using the Úlí art and design system, both traditional and modern, as a point of departure, the
project also examines implicit biases in artificial intelligent artworks, art practices and
machine-human collaborations. I will personally photographically document the over 2500
sculptures available and on display as part of my collection of images to include in the creation
of the dataset. I have future plans to engage with the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos, Yemisi
Shyllon Museum, Pan African University, Lagos and Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK along with
early plans of working with Iwalewahaus Museum, Bayreuth and Museum Rietberg, Zurich.

As a last resort, Ethical Scraping will be used to collect only images without any other data
collected, stored or used with the copyright of the images remaining the rights of the owners.
The project will create a live website on the internet, create a ≶100000 image dataset and
create AI generated artworks based on African art images dataset with the main challenge of
the project is the ethical and legal collection and use of these images.

More Info: jereikongio/com/aiart

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