2.7 AI Impact on Media Art and Culture
Tracks
Track 7
Monday, June 24, 2024 |
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM |
Plaza P11 |
Speaker
Mr Zhiwan Cheung
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
FP: A Matter of Orientation: Interactive Artwork Recasting Historical Artifacts in Latent Reality
1:30 PM - 1:55 PMAbstract
With the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in multiple aspects of our lives, AI biases have emerged as a pressing and multifaceted challenge. What can these biases teach us about narratives existing in our cultural memories and storytelling? A Matter of Orientation is an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) installation that speculates on the complexity of this question forged by the Western mode of thinking. Our interactive 3D world, a multimedia assemblage of AI-generated content, tests the limits and affordances of generative AI and room-scale VR that shape the resulting artwork. A Matter of Orientation translates Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism into a new digital reality configured by large language models and gamification of storytelling. Players are immersed in an interactive VR temple that recontextualizes Oriental objects from San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum (AAM) into deepfake videos, image-to-3D models, text-to-image stories and architecture, and generative script writing. In their algorithmic recreation, these historical artifacts amplify the cultural distance already traveled away from their geographic home.
Biography
Zhiwan Cheung received his BFA from Cornell University and his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Zhiwan first got a taste of performing in front of a camera as a book reviewer for Reading Rainbow, the 1990s television show advocating reading for children. Since then, he has continued to probe the intersection of the personal psyche and anthropological mythologies, focusing on how and where they join and diverge. Zhiwan seeks the unstable grounds of open narratives, guided by the inseparably linked relationships between landscape, technology, and belief systems. As a Fulbright scholar, Zhiwan has exhibited work both nationally and internationally in venues such as NURTUREart Gallery in New York, Pica Pica Gallery in Berlin, and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Currently, Zhiwan is currently pursuing a PhD in Computational Media Arts at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China.
Dr Oksana Kryzhanivska
Assistant Professor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Co-presenter
Biography
Oksana Kryzhanivska is a practicing artist working between Zhuhai, China, and Milwaukee, USA. The artist teaches Creative Technologies at UW-Milwaukee with a scholarly background in the intersection of technology and art. Oksana's Ph.D. in Computational Media and Design and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Calgary, continue to inform the artist's practice exploring the technological extensions of the human body aesthetic experiences, such as interactions with electronics embedded in sculpture, extended reality art, and generative algorithms. Since expanding her practice to Web 3D, the artist was invited to physical and metaverse exhibitions in Kulturzentrum Faust (Germany), Ukraine Gallery (Decentraland), MetaHistory: Museum of War (Decentraland), NAC 2023 (New Art City), and Pavilion 04 (Venice). In addition to numerous online exhibitions, the artist's technologically-influenced works have been exhibited in Canada, the USA, Australia, Germany, Italy, and China.
Dr Kelly Devrome
Zayed University
PIC: The Metaverse and the Potential Impact of AI on Painting and Drawing: A Comparison of Applications and Aesthetics in New Media and Contemporary Practice
1:55 PM - 2:10 PMAbstract
The representation of space in painting and drawing has undergone significant evolution with the incorporation of visual aesthetics found in new media and digital technology, expanding our understanding of perspectival space in the 21st century. This paper examines the spatial aesthetics of AI-generated images based on text input and new media prompts, examining how the potential impact of these images on postmodernist approaches affects the reading of space. What is clear is that the chance element in AI generates multiplicity, and originality is becoming increasingly ambiguous and surreal. Text-based AI images have the capacity to transform how the space of the plane is read in post-modern painting and drawing.
A comparison of early manual scanning methods with text-based AI imagery demonstrates the impact on physicality in the picture plane. The chance element in AI-generated imagery is discussed in relation to media technology processes that retain aesthetic integrity through human input. Text-based AI applications output multiple images based on instructions, and the originality of the output is speculative. The images reviewed are based on memory and recollection and concern how the algorithms induce a sense of metaphysicality within an image.
Text-based AI image generators can blur and distort the original form, and with continued use, the origins of the original may be irrevocably lost. In the case of painting and drawing, the tacit application of physicality is analysed. Finally, the metaverse has become an alternate field that is very different from the one understood in high abstraction and the use of perspectival space in painting. The retranslation of space and time through machine manipulation impacts the essence of form as projected in real time.
A comparison of early manual scanning methods with text-based AI imagery demonstrates the impact on physicality in the picture plane. The chance element in AI-generated imagery is discussed in relation to media technology processes that retain aesthetic integrity through human input. Text-based AI applications output multiple images based on instructions, and the originality of the output is speculative. The images reviewed are based on memory and recollection and concern how the algorithms induce a sense of metaphysicality within an image.
Text-based AI image generators can blur and distort the original form, and with continued use, the origins of the original may be irrevocably lost. In the case of painting and drawing, the tacit application of physicality is analysed. Finally, the metaverse has become an alternate field that is very different from the one understood in high abstraction and the use of perspectival space in painting. The retranslation of space and time through machine manipulation impacts the essence of form as projected in real time.
Biography
Kelly Devrome lectures in the Visual Art Program Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, 2000 – Present. Kelly is an oil painter and drawer, predominantly. Her research interests include art, industrial architecture, modernist abstraction, cultural property, and space semantics. Devrome’s practice examines dream-like qualities and the historical representation of objects. She has participated in the Athens 2010 Symposium for Art, as well as the Zayed University 2014 Electronic Symposium. Her work has been exhibited in Kuwait and Australia and is also part of Victorian collections.
Assistant Professor Alex Lee
Arizona State University, Assistant Professor of Animation, Affiliate Faculty Media Immersive eXperience Center
Arizona State University
FP: Performative 3D Agents leveraging Reinforcement Learning in the Fold
2:10 PM - 2:35 PMAbstract
The Fold: Episode II involves several innovative applications of a subset of machine learning called reinforcement learning. Through goal-based training using positive and negative rewards, the artist demonstrates the potential of leveraging this training-based method of creating computer animations towards 3D character performances within a virtual reality-based art video game that are unique, metaphorically tied to the processes that underlie the core of machine learning, and addresses issues surrounding automation, labor, and craft.
Biography
Alex M. Lee is an artist who utilizes 3D animation, video game engines, extended reality platforms, machine learning and the potential of simulation technologies in order to investigate contemporary modes of representation, artifice and technical images - culling from concepts within science, science fiction, physics, philosophy, and modernity.
Born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in the United States of America, he received his BFA (2005) with emphasis in Photography and Digital Imaging and MFA (2009) with emphasis in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is Assistant Professor of Animation at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design the Arts with Affiliated Position at Mesa City's Media and Immersive eXperience Center.
Dr Lukasz Mirocha
Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University
SP: The Probable Garden: An Exploration of Algorithm-Driven Cinematic Real-time Spaces
2:35 PM - 2:50 PMAbstract
This paper investigates the collaborative artwork [anonymized], which explores the synergy between generative adversarial networks and autonomous cameras in the realm of AI-enhanced art and virtual cinematography. The study delves into the intersection of computer game engines, film language, and algorithmic tools, showcasing alternatives to conventional camera language in digital spatial environments. Housed within a digital recreation of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, it emerges as a metaphorical container for algorithm-driven filmmaking, blurring the boundaries between natural, machinic, and anthropomorphic entities. The paper dissects a sophisticated camera system's role, developed to capture the environment through cinematographic modes, illustrating programmable and probabilistic filmmaking within a major game engine. Drawing distinctions from machinima, it explores the flexibility of game engines in designing virtual scenes, highlighting the nuanced control over camera behavior and image aesthetics. Examining two cinematic modes, the Indifferent Observer and Frantic Collector, the study conceptually unpacks today’s attitudes towards the explosion of generative AI, offering cinematic metaphors for indifference and enthusiasm.
Biography
Lukasz Mirocha is a new media and creative software theoretician/practitioner working with immersive and real-time 3D media. He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, where he is examining real-time media design techniques for art, entertainment and commercial purposes. He published on new media, digital aesthetics and digital design and exhibited artworks internationally. He holds a PhD from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong (2021).
Session chair
Andrew Brown
Artist
Griffith University
![loading](/Content/Images/loader-large.gif)