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.

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.

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.

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.