Ingrid Arcas -- Thesis covers

As a freelancer I have designed the PhD thesis book cover for various Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) specialists. The core challenge here was to find meaningful artistic representations for both human and complex mathematical concepts that are involved in AI.

To do this I was inspired by the artworks of the dutch artist M.C. Escher, a pioneer of art inspired by mathematics. To me, his representations of infinity, symmetry, perspective and impossible objects convey the same notions of reason and dreams present in AI.

This is the cover for the thesis "Logics for causal inference under uncertainty", a way of enabling machines to think about causes ("it rains") and effects ("I get wet"). The thesis starts with this poem of Jorge Luis Borges:

I would like to thank the divine labyrinth of effects and causes, for the diversity of creatures that form this singular universe, for reason, which will not stop dreaming about the map of the labyrinth.

When I read it, the first thing I imagined was the magnificent artwork "Relativity" (1953) and the scene from the movie Labyrinth (1986) inspired by it. From here, I created an abstract background combining a maze and multi perspective staircases representing maps of a labyrinth.

This is the cover for the thesis "Knowledge Representation for Clinical Guidelines", a way for machines to represent and reason about medical treatments. These medical treatments depend on each other, forming increasingly virtuous cycles that increase structure and also our health.

The cover is inspired by the "Cycle" (1938) artwork. By combining different triangles by color and position, disorder is organized as cubes that lean on each other to form a coherent structure. In this structure one can imagine paths that lead to singular places, like the red surfaces. With these I wanted to represent how the process of algorithmic reasoning "walks" on a surface to reach correct solutions, like a successful medical treatment for a disease.