Fruit of passion for Salvador Dali, Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and PhD student at UIC Barcelona Anna Für decided to explore the genius of surrealism and discovered his obsession with technology, an unknown side of the artist, which he turned into a book.
The humanist explores”Dali Cyber_Science_Art”, a book resulting from his doctoral thesis on the influence of technology, alchemy and cybernetics in the last years of the painter from Figueres on the art he would have created if he had lived with him Artificial intelligence (IA).
“Dalí specialists already have an age and that Computer Science It was something new back then. “The computer that Dalí invented in the 70s is frowned upon because it is the most media-driven,” explains the author of the book in statements to EFE, who saw a niche in associating the artist with cybernetics .
According to Pou, Dalí actually identified himself with computers, he defined himself as “Thinking machine and had slightly less well-known works like “Cybernetic Princess.”‘ (1974), ‘“Cyber Odalisque” (1978) I’The Lullian wheels (1979) to the point where he was considered the “father of cybernetics.”
“Years after his death, people started seeing this one eccentricity by Dalí as a task of marketing“What many artists now do, for example, in their social networks,” he explains.
The UIC professor is also curator of the immersive exhibition “Dali cybernetics”exhibited at the Ideal Digital Arts Center in Barcelona, although it is currently exhibited in various countries on a world tour.
“The book is a kind of catalog of this exhibition and is aimed at all viewers. I suggested this immersive experience based on the fact that the artist said that.” The art of the future will be cybernetic or not“, he remembers.
In it, Pou states that Dalí predicted this Metaverse Because as early as 1957 he designed “a dreaming machine”, the first virtual reality glasses.
AI, an unimaginable ally
The humanities teacher is supported by in some of her lectures“Digital Artists”. Mixing AI with Dalí’s works.
“AI is a tool for creating In the middle of the journey (an artificial intelligence system that creates images through words), which is something creative and provocative,” he explains.
For this reason, Anna Pou considers it “unimaginable” what would have happened if Salvador Dalí and AI had coexisted.
“It would have been ideal for that Double image technique“, his main tool, a delirium in which one image transforms into another,” emphasizes Pou.
However, Dalí was allowed to work with him Walt Disney in the short film “Destino,” one of the few (or only) times the artist’s art has been translated to animation. It wasn’t until 2003, almost six decades after production began, that it was finally released.
“In it you see this constant metamorphosis with animation, it is a small foretaste of what could have happened if he had worked with AI,” emphasizes the author of “Dali Art_Science_Cybernetics“, a book also published in Spanish and English.
With the book, Pou wants to convey to readers the idea that “art focuses not only on spiritual themes, but also on the Science and Cybernetics”.
“You have to study Dalí a lot to know that he liked an infinite number of subjects, from alchemy to cybernetics, to be able to understand him,” he clarifies.
Anna Pou continues the research for them doctoral thesis, a project he wants to bring to New York to further deepen Dalí’s relationships with companies such as the American technology company National Cash Register.
