Of Style Bees and Beehives 2025
Our animation artifact is built around the concept of clustering visual artworks to elicit new ‘styles’ in an artwork collection. It illustrates the play of ‘neural representation‘ in creating unique style definitions in the deep learning models. We do this by building an allegory with ‘bees in a beehive‘.
Style clustering proceeds by first identifying style centroids in an artwork collection and then finding the distances of each artwork from the centroid. Each artwork shows a certain affinity towards each centroid and then gets into a clique with the centroid whose distance is minimal. The artwork closest to the centroids plays the role of a ‘queen bee’. The other artworks that belong to a cluster are deemed as ‘worker bees’. We get beehives and a corresponding number of queen bees. The neural style representations, which are derived from complex deep learning models, significantly impact the formulation of clusters. Each representation will elect its own set of queen and worker bees.
Style clustering proceeds by first identifying style centroids in an artwork collection and then finding the distances of each artwork from the centroid. Each artwork shows a certain affinity towards each centroid and then gets into a clique with the centroid whose distance is minimal. The artwork closest to the centroids plays the role of a ‘queen bee’. The other artworks that belong to a cluster are deemed as ‘worker bees’. We get beehives and a corresponding number of queen bees. The neural style representations, which are derived from complex deep learning models, significantly impact the formulation of clusters. Each representation will elect its own set of queen and worker bees.
There are multiple neural style representations (refer to our paper: Style Based Clustering and the play of Neural Style Representations by Dangeti et. al. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.08245). In that sense, it is the representation that gives life force to a bee in the machine learning world. The process is akin to bees getting nectar from the flowers. A Queen bee establishes itself as the focal point (la style icon) of a particular style. The worker bees consolidate that style. Once the representation is changed, the queen bees might lose their power and become worker bees to another bee, as new queen bees are elected and nurtured.
The animation movie also raises the point that the agents in the world of machine learning models, follow the definitions that they are taught while training, and their subsequent world view and play is massively impacted by the definitions (‘style definition in this case) that they are taught.
Of Style Bees and Beehives - The Musical
LYRICS
In the realm of humankind,
Style is what the eyes behold,
Style is what the heart feels.
I
In the world of machines,
Style is what models comprehend,
Style is what the algorithms weave.
Style Model is a flower in bloom,
holding within it a nectar rare,
a secret essence, a hidden dream,
whispering style into the air.
And who drinks from these blossoms bright?
The artworks…
Artworks like bees in flight.
They sip, they swirl, they take their fill,
And carry forth the artist’s will.
From the hive, algorithms call
the Queen Bee – adorned, enthroned.
A Style Icon, bold and tall,
the heart of every fashion known.
Each artwork, each worker Bee
feels the Queen’s magnetic pull.
They flutter close, they hum, they see,
the force that makes their world so full.
Together, they define a form,
a whisper, a ripple, a spreading storm.
The world of Style is thus reborn,
by Al hands, its fate is sworn.
But what if the blossoms shift their bed?
A different bloom, a different thread?
The nectar’s taste, the fragrance new,
and style’s old form fades from view.
New Queens rise, and old ones fall,
the Worker Bees hear a different call.
Chasing fresh allure, they run,
and new Styles wake beneath the sun.
Yet time turns pages, flowers fade,
trends dissolve, their colors frayed.
And when a style no longer breathes,
its nectar lost, its hive bereaved.
But fret not, for dawn will bring,
another bloom, another spring.
A cycle endless, turning fast,
where styles are born and styles outlast.
And so, the rhythm marches on…
New flowers bloom,
the dance is drawn.
Through human minds and Al’s sight,
the world of Style is bathed in light.
Method: Apart from the core DL programming, for the animation visuals, we principally rely on Python-based programming and use the numpy, cv2, pillow, and FFmpeg packages in Python.
Credits:
Art Execution: Pavan Gajula
Art Direction: Vikram Jamwal
Concept: Vikram Jamwal, Pavan Gajula, Abhishek Dangeti
Art Direction: Vikram Jamwal
Concept: Vikram Jamwal, Pavan Gajula, Abhishek Dangeti
TCS Research, INDIA