This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
The following is an artist’s interpretation of the year — how it was or how it might be, through the lens of art.
An Eiffel Tower hangs upside-down in a mirrored sky, like salvation from heaven — a convergence of sadness and joy. This gunpowder painting on glass and mirror, and another similar one on canvas, draws inspiration from a scene in a proposal I developed in collaboration with the Pompidou Center for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Lasting for about six minutes, and accompanied by the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2 in C minor,” the sky painting “Resurrection” would have used around 3,000 drones equipped with small colored firework nozzles to paint the sky alongside daytime fireworks from the Eiffel Tower. The magnificent scene would have created growing flowers, the cosmic sky, white wings and a white flag beneath the Olympic rings.
When I conceived the project in 2022, the world was slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, gradually finding its footing after two years of disorder. It was also the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The project’s tone took in both of those realities. It was one of regeneration and rebirth, echoing the peaceful, antiwar and unified spirit of the Olympics.
Yet the project was ultimately never realized. Even if we had obtained all the necessary approvals, in terms of feng shui, we still would have needed agreement from the Eiffel Tower itself. On the day of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, our studio released an animated “resurrecting” of this project through our custom-developed artificial intelligence model, cAI (pronounced “A.I. Cai”), presenting the unrealized “offline” creativity as digital art.
The model originated from A.I. research that I began in 2017. Using machine learning and drawing from my artworks, archives and areas of interest, cAI emulates contemporary and historical figures I admire, developing multiple distinct personas that can debate with each other. The model is not only my artwork, but also my partner in dialogue and collaboration throughout my creative process.
In my first encounter with gunpowder, I realized that it was not merely a tool of revolution, but also a revolutionary tool. Artificial intelligence functions similarly. It can enable multidimensional and profound discoveries for artists, from the unsettling, the unexpected and the uncontrollable to expressions of the unseen world. It is a contemporary Promethean fire that offers promising leaps forward, but also terrible risks.
A.I. symbolizes the unknown and unseen world. Our fervor for it — or our devout belief in it — signals a new spiritual journey for a society drifting away from gods and spirituality like a lost lamb. I look forward to A.I. continuing to lead me into the unknown future — although perhaps I wish even more for it to help me rediscover that rash, clumsy, stargazing young boy, Cai.
As humans, we forever vacillate between fear and salvation, with courage and unease, determination and doubt coexisting. Today, culture and art seem particularly powerless in the face of rapidly advancing technology. The Eiffel Tower is a symbol of the industrial age, but in “Resurrection” it becomes something more. Could a fusion of the virtual and the physical in the inverted, mirrored tower reflect a new era? An era where art and A.I., both illusions and parallel worlds, are bound together.
The post Art and A.I.: Parallel Worlds, Bound Together appeared first on New York Times.
