# Surprise machines: revealing Harvard Art Museums' image collection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.09343 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09343/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [An Introduction to Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.08458/) (2015)
- [Compression ensembles quantify aesthetic complexity and the evolution of visual art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10271/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Surprise Machines is a project of experimental museology that sets out to visualize the entire image collection of the Harvard Art Museums, intending to open up unexpected vistas on more than 200,000 objects usually inaccessible to visitors. Part of the exhibition Curatorial A(i)gents organized by metaLAB (at) Harvard, the project explores the limits of artificial intelligence to display a large set of images and create surprise among visitors. To achieve such a feeling of surprise, a choreographic interface was designed to connect the audience's movement with several unique views of the collection.