Juliana Carvalho de Souza
the artist
Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, France
Juliana Carvalho de Souza is an applied mathematician from Brazil who works on deep learning, with a focus on self-supervised learning.
the artwork
Dois sonhos, um tempo
Portuguese- Two dreams, one time - 2025 - digital
0 days - 6 hours - 1 minute
audio commentary
At night, I sleep and my models train. As time passes, the cat sleeps, dreams, and ignores deadlines and clocks. Meanwhile, the neural network keeps learning, and through Lucent, a Python library for feature visualization, it produces abstract patterns that resemble dreams, much like the cat’s. Inspired by Dalí’s work, this piece contrasts the biological rest of the cat with the machine’s relentless learning, both unfolding under the invisible logic of time.
Juliana Carvalho de Souza
mathematics in Brazilian culture
Traditional ocas, the communal houses built by Indigenous peoples in Brazil, show a deep understanding of geometry. Their round or oval shape and radial design reflect ideas of symmetry, proportion, and repetition, which are the same concepts used in computer graphics and algorithms. These traditional structures are an example of how mathematical thinking can appear in cultural practices passed down through generations.