A project of artificial intelligence and creativity

Badamonia is a technological experiment in creativity and artificial intelligence promoted by the Épica La Fura dels Baus Foundation, the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Col·legi Badalonès. The project, framed within the 25th anniversary of Badalona City Council’s Crema’l Tu competition, aims to prepare a co-creative proposal for the design of the Dimoni for the 2024 May Festival. The design will be generated by training an artificial intelligence from the drawings of the students of Col-legi Badalonès, highlighting the debate and ethics around these technological tools.

Exhibition

BADAMONIA is the exhibition of the results of a technological and creative experiment on artificial intelligence promoted by the Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus, the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Col-legi Badalonès.

The experiment, developed between November 2023 and February 2024, was aimed at preparing a design proposal for the Dimoni for the Festes de Maig de Badalona in 2024 as a result of the creative collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence.

In the exhibition, which reviews the process followed during this experiment, a total of 595 drawings of Dimonis from the students of the Col-legi Badalonès school are exhibited, which are the images with which an AI model has been trained. This process has allowed the AI to generate hundreds of Dimoni design proposals, all of them original and representative of the essence of the students’ creations. In addition to the students’ drawings, the exhibition includes the designs generated with the AI.

The result of the training process has been the Dimonia, AI design voted among fifteen shortlisted proposals. The Dimonia, collective creation of students and Artificial Intelligence, has been submitted to this year’s edition of the contest Crema’l tu of the City of Badalona. The experiment will also serve as a starting point to raise debates among young people around these technological tools through several practical sessions held during the months of April and May this year.

Starting point

The project began with a knowledge transfer session for a total of 8 teachers from the center last October 2023. Experts from the CVC team explained how this technology works, its limits and ethical and social implications, offering the teachers a theoretical basis to carry out the activity, which directly involves debate, the promotion of creativity in writing and visual arts, cooperative work and consensus, knowledge of new technologies, and the approach to the objectives of sustainable development and environmental issues (topics agreed with the teaching team) from an artistic approach. Starting in November, students between 11 years and 18 years old of the center began the process of creating the designs.

Drawings by the students of the Col·legi Badalonès.

During the months of November and December 2023, the Fundación Epica La Fura dels Baus team and the Computer Vision Center team processed almost 600 drawings from the students of the school to train the artificial intelligence. The training was based on the drawings and descriptions provided by the students participating in the project and Stable Diffusion, a generative artificial intelligence engine, was used.

The result of the training: Dimonia

As a result of the training, 15 proposals for Dimoni have been presented to the students, which have been voted among the participating students of the center (1 student = 1 vote). The winning design, the result of this collaboration of human creativity and artificial intelligence, the Dimonia, was presented in February 2024 by the Col·legi Badalonès to the competition Crema’l Tu of the Badalona City Council.

The Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus carried out the tasks of preparation and adaptation of the design to the bases and requirements of the contest. Through this process, the image of the demon was modified using the same AI that had generated it. Tools such as upscale (to increase the quality), remove (to eliminate elements), and paint (to add components) were used. In this way the side view of the demon and the pedestal were obtained, following the requirements of the contest.