Julie Dítětová & Aleš Hnátek: Programming Patterns

Church fabrics, robes, and stoles that have been folded for many years in the sacristies of churches in various parts of the world. Countless patterns with laurels, flowers, and crosses. The seemingly automatic process of the neural network StyleGAN 2 selects patterns from vestments based on human decision-making and transforms their appearance. The technology generates thousands of patterns, from which Julie and Aleš select those that they will bring back to the physical world.

Patterns from vestments meant for priests thus make their way from church environments to the streets - they become patterns on pants and sneakers that you can walk around the city in. Laurels, flowers, and crosses merge into new compositions and become abstract. They connect to each other in generic squares - pixels, reminding us of the principle of their creation.

Through this process, patterns from the robes make their way into a niche in a metro station. The installation erases the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, referring to its origin, but no longer a part of church space. You can take a peek at it during your morning commute. Textile layers overlap similarly to various parts of the patterns. The NIKA gallery has become a small temple for a while. After the exhibition, the installation becomes a piece of clothing that you might meet someone wearing in the metro.

The project is based on Julie's thesis "Machine Learning: Programming Patterns" from last year. It is an experiment that uses the neural network StyleGAN 2 to generate visual data whose morphology is derived from real motifs of church fabrics from the 18th century.

curators: Agáta Hošnová & Karolína Voleská

graphic design: Pavel Kuja

artist: Julie Dítětová (Design a digitální technologie, UMPRUM) & Aleš Hnátek (Design oděvu a obuvi, UMPRUM)