Fang Zheng presents personal mobile phone photography with AI-generated images in the form of Polaroids, trying to ** the diversity of photography.
Fu Weixin makes the memories and imaginary things of the extinct thylacine directly incarnate into "reality", and proposes that "AI will bring a substitution crisis to the traditional art production methods and artistic styles of human beings".
Li Chenchi uses AI to generate a large number of virtual ** camera models in reality, turning technical anxiety into a creative process and paying tribute to the changes of the times.
Their new works, with different perspectives and different styles, will be unveiled in the AI photography section of "Say to It, the Production and Generation of AI Images" at the 2023 Chengdu International Photography Week.
In addition to bringing together a large number of artists in the photography industry, Chengdu International Photography Week also has many artists from other art disciplines, and everyone is very concerned about it. Li Ge, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and chairman of the China Photographers Association, said in an interview that AI images, contemporary art and other aspects have been presented, and this photography week is diverse and academic.
It's a whole new experiment!
Artistic creation is no longer the exclusive domain of artists.
I try to use AI to depict the past and the Chinese who live in the present, and the environment in which they live. These people are virtual, we have never met, but they seem to be familiar. In May last year, Fu Weixin, director of the Lishui Photography Museum, spent more than a month completing his first AI image feature, "Although We Have Never Met", which contains about 100 portraits of environmental figures, involving ordinary people at different levels of history and current society.
Fu said that the generation method of AI images has crossed the intermediate technical links that photography and film could not surpass before, and has achieved a breakthrough liberation from traditional technical means, so that creators can directly obtain the desired results, "which is revolutionary." "AI can do it all for you with one click, and the only thing people have to do is organize the 'script' and make it visible. ”
AI has made art production more popular and democratic, and artistic creation will no longer be the exclusive domain of artists, which is subversive. "These art categories have their own unique ontological language through development and exploration, and their emergence will only make the ontological value of these arts more precious and important. ”
Artists will never be limited by a certain creative method and technical means, and what kind of creative method you adopt depends on what kind of work you want to make. In the future, he will continue to use traditional photography or other artistic methods to create, "AI is just one of the means."
At present, Fu Weixin is conceiving a new AI project, "Imaginary Exhibition", which presents ideas that have not been put into practice in the form of a live exhibition.
What is a human being? "What is wisdom? ”
Fang Zheng, who has been using AI for a long time to create art, is a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2019, he began to generate the artwork "Artificial Beauty" with the help of A1, collecting information about female anchors online, allowing the algorithm to learn "what is a good-looking female anchor", and generating a large number of non-existent anchors.
When I make AI works, I don't always say that it is a form of expression as a theme, but the philosophy behind generative AI. He stressed.
For the most part, I feel like people overestimate their intelligence. He said that through AI, we can better look at "what is human?" "What is wisdom? It is difficult to judge with a reference, and the standard has always been fixed and in a wandering and floating state, "which may be unique to human beings".
Fang Zheng sees AI more as a tool. He has created 8 sets of AI-generated works and is currently working on the "Game" project: 3D game screenshots combined with computers, which are scheduled to be completed within the year.
Photography presents a kind of diversity.
I was anxious for a while and didn't know what it was for, but after slowly learning about it, the panic and anxiety disappeared. When ChatGPT became more and more popular, Li Chenchi's first feeling - "it swept directly like a wave".
At present, Li is more concerned with the real world of materiality, and is determined to use materials to pay attention to the flow, transformation and reshaping of images, and the more possibilities between them.
Just like the work in this exhibition, "To the Old World", a series of works that combine AI image generation and mixed media. The instructions he inputs with AI are all classic camera types, and what makes him strange is that AI may be for copyright protection or other reasons, and the generated camera** looks like a real camera, but it will lack some letters or logos, "AI changes are very strange and fun." ”
He believes that in the current situation, photography will not produce new forms, and will still maintain the original basis of photographic classification, and may replace a small number of photographic genres such as curiosity, landscape, and portrait with partial image content.
AI has not fundamentally changed the medium or industry as a whole. It doesn't affect a particularly strong and persistent genre of photography, he says, "and photography presents a kind of diversity."
However, he is particularly interested in using modeling to make ** works, "like special effects, it's cool." ”
Attitudes towards AI photography: two extremes.
At present, there are relatively few exhibitions of AI technology in large domestic art museums, and I would like to use this photography week to improve its possibilities in the field of art. Hai Jie, the curator of the section, said that he also hopes that artists can stand up and combine with the original photography concepts and technologies to show the possibilities of AI in photography, "to see how far it can advance photography."
According to industry insiders, generative AI has the potential to have a greater impact and impact on commercial photography, advertising design, animation design, illustration design and other highly commercial art categories that rely on technical manipulation to obtain value.
At present, the attitude of domestic photographers towards AI is similar to that of painting at the beginning of the birth of photography a hundred years ago - "two extremes: either maintain photography or embrace AI." Haijie believes that the relationship between AI and photography can force photographers to think about "what is the essential language of photography" and "how photography can stand".
This section is a new phenomenon and trend emerging in the field of photography, and is one of our three thematic sections. Wang Qingsong, the chief curator of this year's Chengdu International Photography Week, introduced.
What makes AI-generated photography a good work? In his view, AI technology itself should interact with the work and have a logical relationship.
Each person is the most charismatic individual, art needs incompleteness, and personal feelings are especially important. Wang Qingsong said that AI technology relies on machine computing, and there is neither emotion nor emotional cognition, "I want to emphasize the state of each artist's individual cognition of the world." ”