The project Metaverse Archaeology is based on the creative and imaginative ideas of ancient human civilizations, especially the first habitants of South and Central America that been established in their territories for approximately 14,000 years.
Metaverse Archaeology is a fictional archaeological excavation in the Metaverse, and an expedition to a utopian ancient civilization related to the Pre-Columbian cultures, not just on planet earth but in space. We find beautiful ceramics, art, and technology we’ve never seen before, serving as a key to opening the conversation about how the artisans and creatives from the past are still influencing us today.
This project is done with neural networks which the I trained to generate new images from photographs of handmade sculptures made of clay, concrete and acrylic. I also used image editing software, mixing different techniques and styles from the past with a futuristic glance. In this way, we can explore what a discussion between past and future would be like, and maybe find new ways of looking at our reality.
Neural networks are computer systems that are modeled after the brain and nervous system. These systems learn by example and improve over time. I began utilizing Google Collab workflows where I found researchers already sharing their coding notebooks; this is how I was able to explore using Artificial Neural Networks in an early stage to generate images by materializing concepts that had always been abstract words and ideas into physical form. These generated images could reflect the passage of time—the past, or the future of human civilization—extinction from colonization or climate change, and transmutation of the self, using technology as a mirror.