Harold Cohen
“Arnolfini Series” 1-4
“Arnolfini Series” 2-4
“Arnolfini Series” 3-4
“Arnolfini Series” 4-4
1983
Plotter drawing, ink on paper
57×76×5 cm (each)

In 1973, while a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab, Harold Cohen began his work on AARON, a program designed to produce art autonomously. AARON’s innovation lies in the fact that it does not need human commands, but rather can rely upon the program itself to draw abstract figures, still lifes, and even portraits. The “Arnolfini Series” debuted in 1983 at the Arnolfini in Bristol. In this series of works, Cohen’s programmed drawings began with archaic abstractions, inspired by petroglyphs of the Mojave Desert in southern California, and evolved into figurative images of human bodies. The rules that Cohen inputted were not shapes, compositions, or color choices; rather, they allowed AARON, through a process of self-study, to gradually discover and “understand” how humans draw, and from there develop its own style.

Frieder Nake
Walk Through Raster 12.1.1967 Nr. 3
1967
Plotter drawing, ink on paper
41×41 cm

Frieder Nake is one of the founding fathers of algorithmic art. In 1965, Nake and fellow pioneers A. Michael Noll and Georg Nees were the first artists to produce and exhibit computer-generated drawings. “Walk Through Raster” is a series that Nake began in the late 1960s, in which Nake programmed algorithms to control a drawing machine. In this work, a Zuse Graphomat Z64 arrays orange and black blocks. The black rectangles are wider on the horizontal edge, while the orange rectangles are longer along the vertical edge. As one of the first artists to use computerized drawing machines as a creative tool, Nake synthesized the theoretical and expressive potentials of computer science and art.

Hypertransformation
1975
Plotter drawing, ink on paper
330 × 40 cm

(Des) Ordres
1974
Color ink on paper
70 × 70 cm

“Trapeze Series”
1975
Eight plotter drawings
24 × 30 cm each

Hommage à Monet
1981
Plotter drawing, color ink
on paper
19 × 26 cm

Hommage à Monet
1981
Plotter drawing, color ink
on paper
18 × 26 cm

Hypertransformation
1974
Ink on paper
45 × 45 cm

2 Colonnes
1985
Plotter drawing, ink on paper
27 × 23 cm

Vera Molnar is one of the earliest pioneers of computer and algorithmic art. In 1968, Molnar began working with computers and plotters, using algorithms to make paintings based on simple geometric shapes and themes. In her earliest computer artworks, Molnar reveals an interest in the relationship between order and disorder. In her “(Dés) Ordres” series, she changes the parameters of her algorithm to randomly change the regularity of concentric squares. Between regulated order and random distortion, a sense of movement is generated, as if the colored squares are vibrating.

In her “Hypertransformation” series, she gently moves the vertices of rectangles and connects them by lines and later parabolas or hyperbolas. Trapezoids are central to her “Trapèze Series,” creating a new mode of dynamism by deconstructing this geometric form. The two Hommage à Monet works in this exhibition show how Molnar’s algorithmic abstraction can be used in tribute to the painterly language of a more traditional, figurative artist. Finally, the 1980s and 1990s saw the artist shift to a more minimalist style, returning to a sparse vocabulary of rectangles, squares, and deep colors, as in 2 Colonnes.

P-511-O
1995-1997
Acrylic on canvas over panel
135.3 × 190.5 cm

P-224-L
1978-1981
Acrylic on canvas (four parts)
60 × 60 cm each

P-702_C
2000
Pigment ink on canvas
112 × 112 cm

P1011-M
2004
Pigment ink on canvas over panel
130.2 × 130.2 cm

P-122d
1972
Plotter drawing, ink on paper
57.2 × 57.2 cm

Cubic Limit
1973-1974
Video
4'00"


Originally trained as a painter, Manfred Mohr’s earliest algorithmic artworks were a natural transition from his painting practice. His early art embodied a strong musical sensibility, as seen in pieces like P-038-II from 1970 and P-122d from 1972. As his style evolved, these elements of his early works became more fragmented, later replaced by the logical structures of multidimensional hypercubes. Belonging to this earliest set of computer-generated videos is Cubic Limit, which was created between 1973 and 1974. Starting in 1976, Mohr’s interest shifted to an exploration of multidimensionality. P-244-L and P-511-O are based on four-dimensional and six-dimensional hypercubes, respectively. In various ways, they highlight the relationship between these structures’ many points, lines, planes, and spaces. After 2000, Mohr began to create a series of more colorful paintings, of which P-702_C is a key example. Finally, the 2004 work P1011-M belongs to what the artist calls his “Subsets” series based on the eleven-dimensional hypercube, in which his algorithm determines the color choices of the work.

Conform
2018
Oil on canvas
210 × 222 cm

Site
2019
Oil on canvas
210 × 222 cm

How About a Nice Game
2019
Oil on canvas
295 × 211 cm

Wang Yuyang creates works using emergent media but does not deliberately emphasize the novelty of technology. He is more interested in the inherent artistry of outdated technology, the aesthetics of destruction, and material waste. Conform and Site belong to Wang Yuyang’s “Untitled-1” series, in which the artist selects a piece of literature (text) and converts it into a code of ones and zeros. Then, the softwares 3ds Max and Painter transform the code into models (sculptures) and images (paintings). These texts are taken from the books The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and The Infinite Book, respectively. The final work is a direct and objective translation of the literature, from words into forms, without the intervention of any individual subjectivity. Yet in the course of viewing the piece, the audience projects new interpretations and conjectures onto it.

Unlike “Untitled-1,” How about a nice game comes from the artist’s “Wang Yuyang #” series. The works in this series are not derived from texts, but rather are generated by an algorithm. Once the program begins operating, its behaviors can no longer be controlled or predicted. It is a cycle of random selections and decisions. This is not just true of the operational sequence; even the content itself is organized arbitrarily. In this way, the program itself becomes the artist, and the human artist is simply a person who realizes the program’s works, following its commands to complete the physical pieces. Ultimately, the artist himself becomes merely a viewer, compelled to admire, read, and attempt to understand the artwork.

Peter Kogler
Untitled
2020
Digital print on paper
Dimensions variable

Peter Kogler has been working at the intersection of architecture and new media, constructing sculptural, immersive environments that redefine conventional perception of physical space. In his Untitled, hypnotic lines cover every surface of the room. The space feels unnaturally distorted or deformed, as if one is surrounded by a swirling vortex. This red-and-white wallpaper was designed specifically for this exhibition. Although the pattern is static, the entire space seems fluid, moving as the viewer walks through room. Turning the flat walls of the gallery into an illusionistic tunnel, the artist challenges our visual sense while dramatically expanding the potentials of enclosed space.

Leo Villareal
Ellipse
2017
LED lights, stainless steel, electrical hardware, custom software
5.35× 3.23 × 6.24 m

Leo Villareal works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions in light. Ellipse is an ephemeral, volumetric artwork, composed of an array of 262 mirrored, stainless-steel rods and nearly 20,000 individually addressable, white LEDs, which are activated by Villareal’s bespoke software. The artwork’s mirrored stainless-steel structure reflects its surroundings, integrating itself into its environment and virtually disappearing when viewed from within. Undulating fields of light unfurl in orchestrated rhythms evoking stars, galaxies, and other cosmic phenomena. The artwork gives life to inanimate matter through the invisible medium of code and induces a deep connectedness and rare experiential awareness.

Leo Villareal
Floating Bodies
2018
OLED monitors, electrical hardware, custom software
145.1 × 248.6 × 16.5 cm

Floating Bodies is composed of three 4K OLED screens that display high-resolution particle animations. Rhythmic sequences of monochromatic light pulse across the displays, evoking natural phenomena through abstract patterns and unexpected behaviors. Floating Bodies serves as a portal into the visual manifestation of Villareal’s rule-based software, which engages chance through the concepts and computational techniques of artificial life and emergent behavior. By engaging the tradition of the triptych, Villareal explores how this form takes on new meaning in the contemporary digital age, in which screens proliferate around us in increasingly immersive configurations.

Ryoji Ikeda
data.tron (WUXGA version)
2011
Audiovisual installation, DLP projectors, computers, speakers
Dimensions variable
Concept, composition: Ryoji Ikeda
Computer graphics, programming: Shohei Matsukawa, Tomonaga Tokuyama

Through mathematical precision and aesthetics, Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and of visuals as light. His work here employs data as both its theme and medium, exploring the ways in which data, as an abstraction reality, are used to encode, understand, and control the world. Every pixel is strictly calculated by mathematical principles and composed from a combination of pure mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. These images are projected onto a large screen at an extremely fast rate, up to four times faster than normal film, heightening and intensifying the viewer’s perception of and total immersion within the work.

Michel Bret and Edmond Couchot
Les Pissenlits
1990-2019
Interactive installation
Dimensions variable

Michel Bret and Edmond Couchot are among the earliest pioneers of digital art in France. In 1976, Bret began to develop the real-time, digital 3D-animation software Anyflo. He later used this software to help create Les Pissenlits, featured in this exhibition. Since the 1960s, Edmond Couchot has been making interactive electronic devices that react to sound and invite participation from the audience. He has published numerous articles and books on the relationship between art and technology, particularly in the field of image technology.

The interactive installation Les Pissenlits presents a set of nine dandelions animated by subtle movements. When the viewer blows into a sensor, the dandelion seeds fly in all directions and fall slowly as they reorient in mid-air. The stalks then regenerate while waiting for a new interaction. The original version of Les Pissenlits was presented in 1990, and it is among the first works of interactive digital art that feature three-dimensional computer images.

Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer
Homo Insectus
2019
Interactive installation
Dimensions variable

Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer are internationally renowned new media artists, researchers, and pioneers of interactive art. They first began working together in 1992 after meeting at the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt. Since then, the pair have created around forty interactive artworks.

Insects are an essential element of the biosphere. However, due to pollution and the widespread use of chemicals, many insect species have died out in recent years. Homo Insectus is an interactive installation that emphasizes human contributions to the insect world and promotes a positive attitude towards these creatures. Participants in the installation can see their own bodies transformed into a habitat for artificial ants. They propagate and organize themselves into colonies and formations as long as the participant accepts a sensitive dialogue with the artificial creature’s world.

Circular Inception 2
2019
Painted aluminum, nylon, motors, computer, electronic interface
250×250 cm

Plano Flexionante 8
2019
Painted aluminum, nylon, motors, computer, electronic interface
232.5×150 cm

Trialineados Fluo Vert
2016
Plexiglas, nylon, motors, computer, electronic interface
248×27.5×24 cm

Circualineados 248
2019
Brass, nylon, motors, computer, electronic interface
248×20×20 cm

12 Cubos en línea (Tapiz doble 11)
2014
Aluminum, nylon, motors, computer, electronic interface
230×10×10 cm

Elias Crespin uses custom-software-controlled motors to animate modular geometric structures. His installations consist of single pieces or arrangements of metal, hand-formed, geometric shapes, which are suspended in midair by nearly invisible nylon threads. Through computer programming, they constantly shift and mutate, producing highly nuanced choreographic effects. In 12 Cubos en Línea (Tapiz Doble 11), each of the aluminum cubes is strung up by four nylon threads, the sculpture changing in shape as the cubes shift in height. The colored aluminum tubes of Plano Flexionate 8, by contrast, are relatively loose, slanting and changing positions in a freer composition. Through these poetic, geometric, robotic installations, Crespin explores issues of form, space, movement, and time, structuring dynamics of color, materials, textures, light, and shadow.

Today' s Ideology (26 July 2015)
Casey Reas
2015
Software, signed documentation prints, data files, source code, custom-made aluminum box
Dimensions variable

Casey Reas’ art ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations. The “Today’s Ideology” series is a set of continuous, generative collages created from all of the editorial photos in a single day of The New York Times. The images are shuffled and then obliquely drawn, one at a time. Each work in the series is made on the day referenced in the title from the images of that day’s paper. These works flatten the editorial hierarchy and reduce the significance of individual images to reshape the experience of such visual reading. “Today’s Ideology” thus removes contemporary photographs from the pretense of objectivity and into a state where the viewer is more active in exploring and interpreting images.

Charles Sandison
The Reader 1
2019
2 minicomputers, C++ code
Dimensions variable

A facial recognition system is a technology capable of identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame. In general, they work by comparing selected facial features from a given image with faces in a database. While initially a form of computer application, it has seen wider uses in recent times on mobile platforms and in other forms of technology, such as robotics. The Reader 1 by Charles Sandison reverses the recognition algorithm—instead of identifying faces, it generates possible faces that it hasn’t seen. Using a set of initial images in its database, it creates modified versions of people who have never existed.

John Gerrard
Flag (Nile)
2017
Simulation on LCD panel in steel artist’s frame
50 × 50 × 16 cm

Flag (Danube)
2017
Simulation on LCD panel in steel artist’s frame
50 × 50 × 16 cm
Courtesy Feng Lun

Flag (Danube)
2017
Simulation on LCD panel in steel artist’s frame
50 × 50 × 16 cm

Flag (Yangtze)
2017
Simulation on LCD panel in steel artist’s frame
50 × 50 × 16 cm

These simulations by John Gerrard each portray a segment of their titular rivers: the Danube, Nile, and Yangtze. The waters’ colors are digitally recreated alongside buildings and trees on the riverbanks present as reflections. At the center of the scene, a gasoline spill accurately refracts the light to create a vivid prismatic field, an endlessly shifting shape over time. The viewpoint circles this form while the work unfolds over a 365-day solar cycle of night and day. The soft undulation of the waves animates the scene, giving rise to the title of the series.

Miguel Chevalier

Herbarius 2059 (Evolution)
2020
Wooden stand, white book, video projector, computer, infrared sensor
Dimensions variable
Software: Cyrille Henry, Samuel Twidale

Fractal Flowers 2020
2020
12 videos
60'00"
Software: Cyrille Henry

Herbarius 2059 (Evolution) is the virtual incarnation of an herbal, a book of medicinal information on plants whose long tradition dates back to ancient Greece. The Herbarius Miguel Chevalier draws upon is an illustrated herbal of Greek origin, inspired by the first century medical text De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides. Chevalier’s work retains the form of a codex but mixes the real with the virtual, using projection to present texts and images that are generated in real time. Fractal flowers and an imaginary description are projected side-by-side onto a twelve-leaved album. Here, fiction is omnipresent and limitless: the descriptive texts are renewed anew for each reader. Herbarius 2059 (Evolution) is rooted in tradition, but the technology that it employs reveals its radically modern nature.

In addition, Chevalier has created a new herbal composed of “fractal flowers,” virtual and autonomous seeds that germinate randomly, grow, bloom, and die, creating a new seed that will evolve in turn. This vegetal landscape, populated by mineral-like flowers, also evokes the geological world of crystals.

Miguel Chevalier
Extra-Natural 2020
2020
Site-specific digital video
45'00"
Software: Cyrille Henry

Miguel Chevalier’s work examines, in a poetic and metaphorical manner, the question of how nature and artifice coexist and enrich one other today. For Extra-Natural 2020, Chevalier relies on a process that he began employing at the end of the 1990s, based on his observations of the plant kingdom. He transposes this natural imagery into a digital universe of different generations of virtual seeds and flowers. Extra-Natural 2020 employs algorithms that create universes of artificial life, with cycles of growth, proliferation, and disappearance. Each plant evolves according to a unique cycle that is defined by its morphogenetic characteristics. Virtual plants appear randomly, blossom, and then fade, following a dynamic that is repeated ad infinitum. The plants generate imagery that variously evokes baroque strapwork and stylized organic ballet. With this manmade paradise, Chevalier attempts to establish a new relationship with nature and new conditions by which humanity and nature can coexist.

Daniel Rozin
RGB Peg Mirror
2019
Anodized aluminum knobs, motors, 3D camera, control electronics, computer, custom software
182.9 (diameter) × 10.2 cm

To Daniel Rozin, the mirror is a sort of magical object—it liberates the viewer from their embodied confinement and allows them see beyond their experiential limitations. His mirror artworks are computational, but the interface is integrated into their surface, resulting in a simple, intuitive dynamic of interaction—the familiar act of posing for a mirror. RGB Peg Mirror is the latest work from Rozin’s series “Mechanical Mirrors,” and it is the artist’s first piece capable of reproducing the viewer’s reflection in full color. The artist programs red, green, and blue knobs to tilt toward light and change their reflected hues, recreating a full-color portrait in a manner similar to a computer monitor or TV. RGB Peg Mirror has two modes of operation: an interactive period, during which the viewer is reflected in the piece, and a generative function, when the work’s algorithms animate a shimmering display of undulating, vibrant colors.

NEO
2019
Robot performance, permanent ink on canvas
3.2×5 m

270504
2004
Permanent ink on paper
195×180 cm

020404
2004
Permanent ink on canvas
190×160 cm

030910
2010
Permanent ink on canvas
170×290 cm

110807
2004
Permanent ink on canvas
140×160 cm

050517 Astana
2017
Permanent ink on PVC
280×470 cm

Leonel Moura is a pioneer in the application of robotics and artificial intelligence in art, developing highly autonomous “artbots” based on machine creativity. NEO is a swarm of autonomous robots able to create unique artworks without external human control. The abstract composition emerges as a result of the interactions between the robots, the environment, and color sensor readings situated under the machine. At the start, these machines behave in a random fashion; as soon as they detect color, however, they react, concentrating on some areas of the canvas and leaving others empty. The process is thus self-organized, since the composition of the painting is not and cannot be predetermined.

Liu Wa
Racing Thoughts
2019
2-channel video installation
7'28"

Liu Wa' s work encompasses interactive installation, moving image, and painting. Trained in anthropology and sculpture, she creates visual pathways between art and neuroscience, integrating the two divergent yet complementary approaches to human emotions and perception. Her pluralistic practice explores the intertwined relationship and power dynamics between humans and intelligence technologies through the discourse of post-humanism.

Racing Thoughts traces the artist' s circuitous Internet surfing, juxtaposing clinical and humanistic approaches to human emotions. On the right channel, a brainwave headset objectively monitors her real-time neurological changes. The left screen, by contrast, displays hand-drawn animations that illustrate her subjective thoughts and imagination. As she scrolls through countless webpages, the arbitrariness of the Internet brings her attention to unexpected topics, which range from data privacy in neurotechnology to mental health issues among students, from air pollution in China to its nuclear industry during the Cold War. In the end, this virtual journey gradually expands into real-world field research on China' s first military nuclear base, base no. 404.

Michel Paysant
Voir la guerre les yeux retournés (Guernica revisité)
2018-2019
Drawing realized via eyetracking, pencil on drawing paper, plotter
5×9 m

Michel Paysant' s research-based works straddle art and science, with a particular focus on collaborative and cooperative art practices. He is the founder of the creative agency Eye Drawing Studio, which explores the many potentials of eye tracking technology in art.

Voir la guerre les yeux retournés (Guernica revisité) is an artwork made through eye drawing, in which Paysant uses a tracker to record himself viewing Picasso' s iconic Guernica, recreating the work in real time on drafting paper with a plotter connected to the tracking computer. The process unites the acts of viewing and creating through digital technology. The result is a reproduction of and homage to the original work, which also reveals the unique subjectivity and personality of the artist.

Michel Paysant

Eye Calligraphy Project
2020
Live studio

Eye Calligraphy 01 (Les Pensées)
Eye Calligraphy 03 (Les Iris)

2020
Ink on canvas
210×150 cm
Courtesy the artist

Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_01
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_02
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_03
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_04
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_06
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_08
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_10
Eye Calligraphy Project: EC_09

2020
Ink on paper
72×102 cm (each)

In traditional notions of art, the eye is used to observe and appreciate. For Michel Paysant, however, the eye itself becomes an active tool of creation. In his Eye Calligraphy Project, Paysant uses an on-site studio setup to display his creative process. In France, the artist wears an eye-tracking headset that remotely controls a mechanical arm in the gallery. This arm then traces the movements of the artist’s eye in real time onto paper in ink. With this digital technology, Paysant realizes a new potential for the human eye—to write and draw directly. He also transcends the limits of physical space, inventing an entirely new form of “calligraphy.”

Alan Rath
Again
2017
Birch plywood, FR4, aluminum, steel, UHMW, motors, custom electronics
3.76×7.42×0.53 m

A pioneer in electronic, kinetic, and robotic sculpture, Alan Rath has produced an ever-evolving body of work since the early 1980s. Again is, to a certain degree, an updated version of the artist’s older sculpture Robot Dance, completed in 1995. The movements of Again are inspired by various animal behaviors and simple physical processes. In all cases, these motions are mathematically modelled and generated by the computer program at the heart of the sculpture. The program makes endless variations to each movement to avoid a simple repetitive loop. The software was originally written to make large changes to its behaviors, discovering new types of motion without specifying every detail in advance. There was a sort of “survival of the aesthetically fittest” process, in which certain results persisted and others died out. The final program is a result of this evolutionary process.

Memo Akten
Deep Meditations: A brief history of almost everything in 60 minutes
2018
Video installation, custom software, generative video, generative audio, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, generative adversarial networks, variational autoencoders
60'00" seamless loop

Memo Akten' s practice and research focus on artificial intelligence and expressive human-machine interaction, which deepen collaborative creativity between humans and machines and augment artistic expression. His project "Deep Meditations" is a series of works in different formats. Deep Meditations: A brief history of almost everything in 60 minutes is a reflection on life, nature, the universe, and our subjective experience of them. To make this immersive filmic installation, the artist trained an artificial neural network on images downloaded from the photo-sharing platform Flickr, depicting life, love, art, faith, ritual, worship, God, and other abstract concepts. At the same time, he collected religious music from around the world off YouTube. He then applied another neural network to study these compositions and generate a new soundtrack for his artwork. Ultimately, all of the aesthetic elements in this piece derive from neural processing, expressing a robotic intelligence' s
"understanding" and imagination with respect to these abstract human topics.

Quayola
Jardins d' Été
2019
HD video triptych
Dimensions variable

Quayola employs technology as lens to explore the tensions and equilibriums between seemingly opposing forces. Jardins d' Été pays homage to French Impressionism. The work investigates the ways in which nature is observed and synthesized, which, in the nineteenth century, served as a point of departure toward total abstraction. Quayola recreates conditions similar to what would have been observed by the French Impressionist landscape painter to achieve new modes of visual representation. He engages with an extensive technological apparatus to precisely capture subtle nuances beyond human perception. Employing ultra-high-definition cameras and custom computer software, natural landscapes are seen through the "eye" of a machine and serve as a counterpoint to the subjective human eye.

Refik Anadol
Machine Hallucinations - NYC Fluid Dreams
2019
Single-channel video from generative computer
Dimensions variable

Refik Anadol often works in site-specific public art, creating sculptural treatments of parametric data as well as immersive audiovisual performances. By bringing the fields of architecture and media arts together, he challenges the potentials of post-digital architectural.

The question of why we collect, record, and share our everyday experiences has always been entangled with formal and aesthetic concerns about how to represent reality, totality, and the depth of human imagination. Machine Hallucinations – NYC Fluid Dreams is an experiment in synesthetic reality, deeply engaged with these questions while revealing new connections between visual narrative, archival instinct, and collective consciousness. The artist deploys machine learning algorithms on an image database containing more than 100 million photographs of New York, transforms them into millions of data points, and regroups them according to their architectural styles and other themes. The work consists of three chapters: "Memory," "Consciousness," and "Dream." It reveals the hidden connections between the past, present, and future of the culture and history of New York’s landmark architecture. The project also shows how machine intelligence reimagines our collective memory of the city, as well as the latent cinematic experience of this process.

Yang Yongliang
Journey to the Dark II
2019
3-channel 4K video
9'50"

Yang Yongliang proposes a connection between traditional art and the contemporary experience, exploring ancient Chinese aesthetics and literati beliefs through modern language and digital technology.

Journey to the Dark II is a three-channel, 4K video, the second in this series of works. It depicts a surrealistic urban night scene against a vast sea of stars, the two blending together. The artificial and the natural are overlaid, co-existing in an uncanny resonance. Inspired by the overlapping mountains of Song dynasty landscape painting, the artist constructs a dynamic scroll "painting" through the medium of digital video. The composition shifts and unfolds as if one were observing a traditional landscape painting. Yet here, the cityscape is a scene of contemporary society, and this cluster of buildings is the landscape in which modern humans reside. Yang thus uses the forms of ancient Chinese painting to inspire critical reflections on contemporary social conditions.

Lu Yang

Material World Knight
2018
3-channel video
22'14"
Music: Satellite Young

The Great Adventure of Material World
2019
Interactive game
Technical support: MetaObjects
Music: 2080

Mortality, androgyny, hysteria, existentialism, and spiritual neurology feed Lu Yang’s jarring, occasionally morbid fantasies. Our bodies, along with all the matter of the universe, are vessels that contain us, and everything within this material world undergoes the Buddhist life cycle of “formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness.” The characters in Material World Knight include genetically-modified humans, cyborgs with mechanical exoskeletons, and robots that are unclassifiable according to the principles of living organisms. They fight one another and debate the world’s ultimate, intractable questions. What is the relationship between these debates and our personal feelings, our joys and sorrows?

The interactive game The Great Adventure of Material World is a continuation of Material World Knight. The protagonist, Material World Knight, takes the viewer on an adventure through a diverse array of material worlds. These worlds are interspersed with characters from Lu Yang’s previous works. They appear as guides or protagonists of specific realms, traveling together with the viewer to explore the artist’s universe. During the adventure, Material World Knight upgrades his weapons and equipment. The most important weapon is the Vajra Spear, as in myth the Vajra is the hardest object in the universe, able to cut through everything physical. By slicing through all matter, Material World Knight reveals the essence of the material world. However, even as he soars through the universe on a manned, transforming robot and destroys all physical obstacles, obstacles of emotion and desire remain indestructible.

aaajiao
bots
2017-2018
PVC inflatables
Dimensions variable
Produced in collaboration with Xu Cong

aaajiao is the virtual persona of artist Xu Wenkai, whose work is marked by a strong dystopian awareness and literati affect. Much of his art speaks to the cultural phenomena and political strategies that have emerged against the backdrop of new technologies and media. aaajiao’s recent projects extend the scope of his practice to disciplines as diverse as architecture, topography, and design to capture the pulse of the generation that has grown up consuming cyber technology and living through social media.

The large-scale installation bots reflects on the general consumption of molecules, particles, and microparticles in the artist’s private and public life. In the work, these elements are blown up to an almost surreal dimension. The viewer traverses the gallery filled to the brim with inflatable models, observing their details. Throughout the exhibition period, the gas inside will gradually seep out. This state of constant change perhaps reflects the true nature of the observers, the Chinese title of this piece.

aaajiao

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icon006.gif
icon007.gif
icon008.gif
icon009.gif

2019
LED screen, gif
16 × 16 × 6 cm (each)

aaajiao' s "icongif" series is a new project the artist began in 2019. It comprises a set of GIFs made on a phone using a limited number of pixels. The word "icon" here is polyvalent, identifying both computer graphics for various systems or programs as well as an idol. Each moving image here is a portrait of a semi-human, semi-robotic being, blending the two through their flickering, abstractly enlarged pixels. aaajiao aims to explore questions of identity and selfhood in the post-human age, reflecting the artist’s stated belief: "I am my own bot."

Lin Ke

Apple Orchard
2019
UV print on aluminum
142×120 cm

Green Eyes C
2019
UV print on aluminum
176×210 cm

Since 2010, Lin Ke has focused on the behavioral psychology of the computer age, using himself as a test subject. With his laptop as his studio, the artist extracts materials from computer software and the Web. These then become the fodder and form of his art. Part of Lin Ke' s series "Sky Painting," Apple Orchard and Green Eyes C reflect the artist' s continued fascination with the blurred boundaries between the virtual spaces of our computer age and reality as traditionally experienced. Over the past few years, Lin has returned to his artistic roots by painting a watercolor each night before going to sleep. Drawing on figures from his life as well as images from the Internet and magazines, he amassed a large collection of works that depict various religious figures, friends, and celebrities. Lin then scanned these images and broke them down into layered elements, re-presenting the digitized remains of the original watercolor as a reconstituted print. Through this process of analysis, conversion, and reproduction, Lin' s work questions the nature and value of artistic media, image-making, and circulation.

Fei Yining and Chuck Kuan
Breakfast Ritual: Art Must be Artificial
2019
2-channel 4K video, color, sound
8'51"

Fei Yining and Chuck Kuan share an interest in the spiritual condition of humanity against the backdrop of rapid technological development, as well as how might art respond to this issue. Breakfast Ritual: Art Must Be Artificial presents a snippet of a post-Anthropocene future in which human civilization has fallen. An AI in the form of a young girl is enacting an adapted version of Marina Abramović’s seminal performance Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful over breakfast. The protagonist chants her lines as if they were an incantation, revealing to the audience that the world as they know it has ended. Apart from the breakfast scene, another key setting is an endless spiral staircase that appears in the protagonist’s dream as she naps. This scene is inspired by Henri Rousseau’s The Snake Charmer. In Rousseau’s adaptation, the snake who tricks Eve into consuming the forbidden fruit is instead enchanted by Eve’s flute, a disturbing twist on Eden. Humanity and artificial intelligence—who is Eve, and who is the snake?

Daniel Rozin
Darwinian Rotating Lines Mirror
2014
Custom software (black and white, silent), video camera, computer, screen
Dimensions variable
Courtesy bitforms gallery, New York

For nearly three decades, Daniel Rozin' s practice has investigated the structure and materiality of images. He has created hundreds of pieces centered on the idea of reflection or mirrors. His interactive installations and sculptures integrate the viewer, in real time, to create a representation of their likeness in the object. Darwinian Rotating Lines Mirror is not an assemblage of objects, but rather an interactive display of line, luminosity, and tempo. The basis of its software is Darwin' s theory of random mutations, natural selection, and evolution. Lines rotate on the screen while increasing in brightness, and the software emphasizes a portion of these marks according to their contribution to the viewer' s image. The result is an unfolding of materialization, as detail after detail is revealed in a constantly changing display. The work cycles through this process every few seconds, starting a totally new evolution cycle every time.

Miguel Chevalier
L' Origine du Monde
2019
Installation, generative and interactive virtual reality
Software: Cyrille Henry, Antoine Villeret

Since 1978, Miguel Chevalier has focused exclusively on computers as a means of artistic expression and continues to be a trailblazer. Taking references from the history of art and reformulating them using computer tools, his works explore recurrent themes such as nature and artifice, flows and networks, virtual cities and ornate designs. In the 1980s, Chevalier began tackling the question of the hybrid, generative, and interactive image.

L'Origine du Monde is an interactive installation projected onto the gallery’s floor, inspired by biology, microorganisms, and cellular automata. The installation presents different black-and-white, virtual paintings composed of universes of cells that proliferate, divide, and merge in a rhythm sometimes slow, sometimes fast. This organic world at times also incorporates unstable megapixels. The artist thus brings together cells, the basic element of life, with pixels, the basic element of artificial life, all of which react visually according to the viewers' footsteps.

Celyn Bricker and Faye Lu
YH
2020
LED screen, computer, custom software, depth sensor, deep learning
Technical support: Baidu Paddlepaddle

Celyn Bricker' s art explores ideas of community, technology, and our relationship to nature. He develops these themes across a range of media. Faye Lu is a photographer and documentarian. Bricker and Lu together founded Celu Studio, an art and design studio focused on addressing environmental issues through art and technology.

YH is an AI-generated artwork that explores our experience of nature as imagined by a machine. By analyzing the forms and colors of coral reefs, the AI creates a continually shifting, artificially imagined underwater landscape that changes as the viewer approaches the image. Real coral reefs, which are under threat due to human activity, are exceptionally complex webs of interdependent elements, which in some ways mirror the operations of certain AI networks. YH is a direct response to mankind' s intrusion into the natural world, while also imagining the machine itself as an extension of this natural world, not wanting to be disturbed.