Artificial intelligence devoted to art

Stele created by DATEV staff combines both human and technical potential.

A new stele created by DATEV staff now decorates the DATEV IT campus 111 rose garden in Nuremberg. The special thing about it: not only the staff’s creativity but also artificial intelligence (AI) are incorporated in the process of creation. The sculpture symbolizes constructive cooperation, appreciation of diversity, and creative use of modern technique thus epitomizing digital transformation on a personal level.

As part of “DATEV kreativ”, works of art are created regularly by the IT service provider’s employees. The current project follows the idea of creating a relation to DATEV’s business area and at the same time using a technical component as an essential part of the creating process. Quickly AI became the choice, being an important issue for DATEV. AI is an outstanding tool to help people with many tasks – especially when it comes to recognizing patterns. This feature was devoted to art in this project.

AI as transformer

The symbiosis of human creativity and technique was achieved by DATEV staff sending in personal photos. From their meta data AI calculated a shape suited as design element for the stele. For its specific arrangement a pictogram in a star pattern was chosen. This basic pattern gave the oevre its uniform framework yet keeping the individuality of each element by the uniqueness of each peculiarity. Using ten predefined parameters AI analyzed the submitted photos and transformed this data into an individual pictogram. The photos, the original material, showed the sender’s favorite objects, so each star created has its very personal touch.

In a next step the pictograms were transferred to stainless steel and welded out using a plasma cutter. This part was carried out by the 138 participants of this workshop. In order to identify their individual star in the sculpture the pictograms were given the initials of their submitter. The works of art created this way now form a sculpture 3.50 meters high. Besides other steles created within the “DATEV kreativ” projects it has a permanent place in the rose garden behind the DATEV IT campus 111.