Magnezit Museum opened an unusual exhibition of collaboration between human and neural network for Metallurgist Day. The exhibition shows the achievements of Magnezit people, highlighting the journey from idea to implementation of engineering projects, and offers to have a different look on advanced technology, asking viewers questions about the future.

Photographs of innovative facilities of Satka Production Site of Magnezit Group and digital graphics based on them are the foundation of the “Artificial Intelligence. Humans × Ideas × Achievements” exposition. Works co-authored by artificial intelligence turned out to be different in genres. The neural network adopted the style of impressionism, cubism, and other movements. In some of the works, you can recognize the personal style of famous artists, such as Vincent van Gogh or Gustav Klimt. Most of the digital graphics give a clear idea of the industrial facilities they depict, but there are some works that would leave viewers puzzled without an original photo to explain them. Like the take of artificial intelligence on the Avangard complex of melted powders.

The central part of the exhibition is dedicated to people of Magnezit – inventors and innovators. The neural network processed their portraits in the same style. Near the portraits, there is information about one of their major patents and brief biography of the authors. Some of them are Evgeny Mezentsev – author of the patent “Method of Producing Unburned Periclase Carbonaceous Refractories” (1986), Raisa Polovinkina – co-author of the patent “Method of Producing Steel-Smelting Flux” (2008), Andrey Luzin – co-author of the patent “Method of Multi-Row Placement of Liners of Compound Plates for Slide Gate Valves” (1984).

The company’s history can boast of many scientific and research solutions. This scale can be grasped from copies of patents for inventions and utility models presented as a giant panel on one of the walls of the exhibition. You can also see what patent documents looked like at different times (from 1965 until now).

The first to visit the exhibition were Magnezit employees, who were awarded on the occasion of Metallurgist Day, and the company’s management with People’s Artist of Russia Oleg Mityayev, who gave a concert for the employees of SPP and partner enterprises on this holiday.

“Very unusual exhibition. Computer programs or neural networks for photo processing are popular with most people now. I personally have not tried them, but I notice these types of works on the Internet. And today it was interesting for me to see how artificial intelligence can change photos of Magnezit. These are the moments we’re used to seeing every day and we don’t event realize that they can be presented in different light, as one of the kinds of modern art. You can go on and on about the role of artificial intelligence in human life. I can’t say for sure if it has more benefits or vice versa – this depends on its functions. And, of course, artificial intelligence should be applied equally to human labor, helping us,” believes the Area Manager for New Product Types (Aluminosilicate Compounds) at the Product Innovation Department Nikita Mukhamadeyev who received a Certificate of Gratitude from the Minister of Industry, New Technology, and Natural Resources of Chelyabinsk Oblast.

The exhibition will be available until September 15. Admission is free, but visitors need to call 9-46-84 to pre-register. 

BY THE WAY: 

Apart from the graphics part, the exhibition also offers a film about artificial intelligence.  

Moreover, we invite everyone to participate in the “Neural Network as a Co-Author” project. To do it, you will need to: 

- Choose a photo which is appropriate to the theme of the exhibition “Humans × Ideas × Achievements”. This could be a photo you took yourself or selected from the archive of Magnezit Group on Vkontakte page of Magnezit Museum.

- Process the photo using any available neural network that works with images. 

- Send the initial photo and the image generated by neural network to museum@magnezit.com. 

- Don’t forget to put you name and the title of your work in the e-mail. 

Moderated works will be posted in the interactive gallery of the project. We wish you all success in your creative pursuits!

Source: Magnezitovets. Photo by: Vasily Maksimov