Vanessa Utz
Vanessa is currently a MSc Brain and Cognitive Science student at the University of Amsterdam, while working as a Visiting Graduate Research Student here at the iViz Lab. Her master’s thesis investigates how humans form aesthetic judgments and how this process is modulated by movement within the percept.
Contact: vutz@sfu.ca
Position: PhD Student
Research
Deep Learning AI Creativity For Visuals / Words
Using Cognitive Science as a basis for our work, we attempt to model aspects of human creativity in AI. Specially we are using Neural Networks (and evolutionary systems) in the form of Deep Learning, CNNs, RNNs and other modern techniques to model aspects of human expression and creativity.
Cognitive (AI) Based Abstraction
What is abstraction? Can you use AI techniques to model the semantics of an idea, object, or entity, where that understanding allows for abstraction of the meaning? We use several AI techniques including genetic programming, Neural Nets and Deep Learning to explore abstraction in its many forms. Mainly here in the visual and narrative arts.
Publications
Using an AI creativity system to explore how aesthetic experiences are processed along the brains perceptual neural pathways
Journal Article: Cognitive Systems Research, 2019
19 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2019.09.012
Aesthetic Judgments, Movement Perception and the Neural Architecture of the Visual System
Conference Proceedings: Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures Meeting, August 15, 2019 2019
pp. 538-546. DOI: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25719-4_70
Seattle, USA
Springer, Cham