Welcome to ‘Het kunstlab van M’: young people get to grips with AI and art

M Leuven introduces new educational project focused on artificial intelligence and art

September 21, 2023

From today, secondary school students can explore for themselves the possibilities of artificial intelligence and art in their classrooms, thanks to ‘Het kunstlab van M’, a brand-new participation project with an accompanying web tool. At Hetkunstlabvanm.be pupils can familiarise themselves with AI and learn to generate their own artworks based on prompts. Their creations are then featured in a permanent AI exhibition.

“One of M Leuven’s missions is to actively involve our visitors with the museum and with the art”, says Cornillie, Alderman for Culture and Chair of the Board of Directors at M. “Furthermore, visual literacy is a major focus for the museum, because in a world dominated by images, it is an essential skill to be able to read and interpret them. In ‘Het kunstlab’, secondary school students learn how to view, describe and generate artworks for themselves using AI tools.”

Sofie Vermeiren, Head of Public Mediation at M, adds: “No one can get around the pervasiveness of artificial intelligence, schools included. ‘Het kunstlab’ allows both teachers and students to familiarise themselves with this technology in an accessible, intuitive way. Our goal is to meet the need for guidance and information, but also to see whether AI can enthuse young people about art.”

How does it work?

M’s target audience for ‘Het kunstlab' is students from schools in Leuven, the rest of Flanders and the Netherlands. On the website Hetkunstlabvanm.be they can visit a digital museum: 30 images of diverse works from M’s collection. Every artwork is accompanied by a short explanation, an audio fragment and viewing assignments.

From these 30 works, the pupils pick one that catches their attention. Next, they watch a brief tutorial on the site about AI and how it works. They also learn how to create a prompt: a short text describing the selected image.

They can then enter this prompt into an AI tool – they have the choice of three tools, each with different uses. On the basis of their prompt, the tool generates three or four images.

The students are then able to play around with the image and give free rein to their creativity. Finally, they can upload the result on the site and share it with the rest of Flanders. In time, a permanent exhibition of digitally generated images will be created.

Participation at M

Every two years, M Leuven organises a participation project. In 2021 this was ‘The Ten’, an exhibition compiled by ten guinea pigs who were participating in a digital experiment. The guinea pigs were taking part in a game in which each competed to get their favourite artwork from M and Cera’s collection into the exhibition. The final selection, ‘The Ten’, is on display at M until 31.03.2024.

‘Het kunstlab van M’ is a collaboration with Cera.

The web tool was developed by kpot.

Advice for the project came from imec and Scivil.