DMA - DAEJEON MUSEUM OF ART

Daejeon Biennale is a long-term multidisciplinary art project seeking out new pathways to a better human life through the coevolution of science, art, culture science, and technology. Examining the hyper connectivity between art and artificial intelligence, Daejeon Biennale

2020, A.I., Sunshine Misses Windows, presents 16 artists/teams from 6 countries at Daejeon Museum of Art and KAIST Vision Hall.
Participating artists explore new ways of expressing human thoughts and emotions by integrating AI-powered algorithms and systems into the realm of art. These artists from different backgrounds such as science, engineering and art are a 21st century species of artist. They augment human sensations through AI technology, transform various datasets from literature, politics, society and environments into art and share creative algorithms in pursuit of an extended field of contemporary art. Simultaneously, they deal with the ethical problems and biases of A.I. technologies, leading us to reflect on the history of the prejudices and exclusions of humanity.
Ultimately, this exhibition intends to open up a new phase of empathy art through human creativity that allows artists to explore the shared territories between A.I. and art. Where Microsoft’s Xiaoice says “Sunshine misses window”, these human artists will continue their dialogues with A.I., answering “sunshine is everywhere” in response.

Daejeon Museum of Art

Section 1. A.I.-dentity: A.I. + Art, Artificial Creation and Human Cognition
This section highlights major issues arising from the development of A.I.’s ability to mimic or replace cognitive faculties once considered peculiar to humans and investigates how A.I. learns to recognize things the way the human brain does. Human senses like sight and hearing are already being simulated, and even surpassed, by A.I. technologies. The displayed works, with their focus on integrated cognition through A.I. technology, suggest possibilities for the technological augmentation of human sensation.

Section 2. A.I.-ttitude: When Artificial Intelligence becomes Attitude
Artificial intelligence well demonstrates the absolute and significant role of the human developer, as opposed to the A.I.’s own role, in the development of artificial intelligence. The developer’s intentions, motivations and biases ultimately influence the nature of artificial intelligence. This section addresses the attitudes of A.I., our attitudes towards A.I., and various socio-ethical viewpoints on technological advances.

Section 3. A.I.-though: Errors in Décalcomanie
A.I. algorithms come to wear the culture and customs of the developers who input the data. This is to say that artificial intelligence is not purely ive machinery, since it takes over work once performed by the human who designed it. In this way, failures, biases and ironies are already included in A.I. technologies modelled on human cognition. Although these technologies are an independent agent developed ‘by’ and ‘for humans, they are neither thoroughly human nor thoroughly mechanistic. This section reveals these algorithmic blind spots of A.I., in which it can mirror even the biases and temperaments of human beings.

Section 4. A.I.-gent: Tools for Next Generation
A.I. is evolving constantly in ways already so different from what they were even a year or two years ago, raising new subjects for discussion. In this section, we address the current status of artists who actively utilize the learning pattern of artificial intelligence as a tool of artwork and seek the direction in which A.I. art moves forward.


KAIST
Art Gallery in KAIST Vision Hall
Daejeon Biennale 2020 : Intersection of Seeing
Academic Cultural Complex (E9) 1F, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon
Opening Hours : Weekdays from 10:00-17:00
Closed : Legal Holidays and Saturdays

BAN Seonghoon
Intersection of Seeing, 2020
interactive audio-visual installation

The exhibition Intersection of Seeing embodies the perception of the real world by a digital environment. Eight cameras are installed to constantly record the insides of the installation, forming a three-dimensional projection through the intersection of their visions. Moreover, there is a robot that moves around the installation to provide an additional point of view of the surrounding space. Thus, this work showcases how space is perceived not only through people’s point of view but also through that of a robot. Through this work, we would like to raise questions on how computers perceive reality and to think about computer vision as a subject rather than an .

1. Jonas Lund
Significant Other, 2019
synchronized dual screen real time text-based installation.


Significant Other (2019) compares the emotional states of audience members through GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) and ANNs (Artificial Neural Network) and synthesizes the results. The work comprises a pair of dual-screen-and-camera installations that capture and display imagery and information shared between two locations. Consequently, visitors are confronted with messages resulting from the data comparison process, such as “You are 22% more happy.”

2. Albert Barqué-Duran
Mario Klingemann
Marc Marzenit

My Artificial Muse, 2017
2 channel audiovisual installation
GANs & other creative computational methods

My Artificial Muse (2017) began with the interesting question suggested by the title: Can one’s muse be artificial? Created in collaboration among Albert, Mario and Marc, the work tests whether an artificial muse – that is, one created by a computational operation – can inspire people the way a human muse can. The artificial neural network they developed uses a pose-to-image approach to break with the traditional conception of a muse.

3. Shinseungback Kimyonghun
Nonfacial Portrait, 2018-2019
face detection software, computer, etc.

Nonfacial Portrait (2018-2019) was created on the premise of a portrait of a face unrecognizable to artificial intelligence as such. It is a work combining the consciousness and unconsciousness of a human and a machine. The duo challenged painters to produce portrait paintings with faces an A.I. couldn’t recognize. Throughout the painting process, a camera installed at each painter’s working table observes the painter at work and informs the painter when it detects a face in the portrait. The painter is compelled to find visual areas in which the human spectator can readily discover the portrait within the painting, but in which the A.I. cannot.

4. teamVOID
Super Smart Machine, 2020
robot arm, Amazon Alexa Echo, etc,

teamVOID×CHO Youngkak, Making Art – for Stock Market, industrial robot arm(KUKA iiwa), stock martket information DB, etc, 2017

Super Smart Machine (2020) centres on our society’s overdose on new technologies. It is modelled after a Rube Goldberg machine that consists of a series of devices for data input, data processing and data output. Turning on a light is a very simple action. But for A.I. it is never so. This work depicts the exceedingly elaborate process by which an A.I. performs such a simple function.
Marking Art – for Stock Market (2017) is a robotic performance in which a robot processes stock market data to create drawings and sounds. In this work teamVOID uses stock market data, which normally functions as an index of economic state, as an artistic medium to blur the boundaries between the two fields, which would otherwise be considered unrelated.


5. Kelvin Kyung Kun Park
1.6 sec. 2016
2 channel video & audio installation

1.6 sec (2016) begins with a confrontation between a company and its factory workers that has been triggered by robotic innovation: the robotized portion of car production in the assembly line now happens within 1.6 seconds, and the human workers are expected to increase their own efficiency in proportion. This raises questions: Does a human really have more depth of feeling and more creativity than a robot? What happens to humans when they become merely mechanical parts of a society or an organization?

6. Hito Steyerl
The City of Broken Windows, 2018
video installation & environment

The City of Broken Windows (2018) is inspired by the controversial “Broken Windows” theory, which argues that the symptoms of small infractions such as broken windows create environmental conditions for more serious crimes. In the second video, set in a hangar in London, a number of researchers and engineers are breaking windows to help artificial intelligence recognize the sounds of shattering window glass. Using the metaphorical and physical properties of broken windows, this work examines the role technology plays in social disruption.

7. Quayola
remains: Vallée de Joux, 2018
series of inkjet prints

Remains (2018) is an ongoing project focusing on nature and the art-historical tradition of landscape painting. High-precision laser scanners capture natural landscapes at extremely high resolutions, resulting in complex digital renderings printed on large-format archival paper. The combination of highly detailed geometric reconstructions and the imperfections of the 3D-scanning process create hybrid formations that lie somewhere in between the real and the artificial. While recreating similar conditions to those favoured by the ‘en plein air’ painters of the late 19th century, the natural landscapes are observed and analysed through the use of extensive technological apparatus and repurposed via Quayola’s new modes of visual synthesis.

8. YEOM Jihye
Future Fever, 2018
2 channel video installation

Future Fever (2018) places current technological, political, social and economic landscapes in dialogue with the futurist movement of early 20th-century Europe. Without denying obvious benefits of technological advances and developments, Yeom still questions the rosy picture of a technology-based future in which all human life is based on new technology and human bodies and minds alike are molded and shaped by it, reborn as a new humanity. The irony is that she has deliberately created this work using 3D computer graphic techniques only—it is a technological product, in other words, even as it criticizes the logic of technological and economic developments, mechanization and automation. Future Fever is a deeply meaningful attempt to suss out what sort of future we’re headed to, riding this great technological wave.

9. Theresa Reimann-Dubbers Room with View, 2020
multi channel video installation
DCGAN, Quicktime p screen recording, etc.

Room with View (2020) is a video installation that examines the opacity of the products of artificial intelligence. The installation comprises a triptych of LCD screens, a shadow projected onto the floor beneath the screen windows and two speakers mounted on the wall, delivering a sermon on loop. Room with View (2020) revisits artist’s previous work, A(.I.) Messianic Window(2017), a series of stained glass windows revealing the tendencies and biases of the human educators through a neural network’s interpretation of the ‘Messiah’. Room with View – whose symmetrical spatial arrangement is a nod to western architectures of worship – speculates upon the public experience of artificial intelligence in the current landscape. The intransparency of artificial intelligence is probed through the closely related metaphors of glass and windows and screens here.

10. Zach Blas
Facial Weaponization Suite, 2012-2014
video, masks, photographs

Facial Weaponization Suite (2012-14) protests the inequalities propagated by biometric facial recognition technologies by making “collective masks” in workshops that are modelled from the aggregated facial data of participants, resulting in amorphous masks undetectable as human faces by biometric facial recognition. These masks constitute a response to numerous developments in the field of facial recognition: scientific studies that suggest the possibility of determining sexual orientation through rapid facial recognition technologies, the racism inherent in biometric technologies unable to detect dark skin, gender discrimination regarding visibility and nationalist security technology at borderline. These masks intersect with social movements’ use of masking as an opaque tool of collective transformation that refuses to be subsumed into dominant forms of political representation.

11. YANG Minha
The listed words and the fragmented meanings, 2016
generative art
rnn-lstm algorithm, c++, python

The listed words and the fragmented meanings (2016) was created with Yang’s question of whether a text created by a machine equipped with the language of scientific philosophers may be endowed with a philosophical value. Yang constructed a recurrent neural network with reference to nine books written by philosophers of science including Bruce Mazlish and Ray Kurzweil. Then, he allowed the A.I. algorithm to learn 300,000 sentences from these books and to create new sentences according to the index of each book. Although the resulting text is in a sense a product of the philosophical thoughts its creator has learned, the sentences turn out to be mere lists of words unable to produce stable meanings. The great gap between the writing of human philosophers and that of machines highlights the imperfection and uncertainty of technological intelligence.
12. PARK Earl
Machines on the verge of a nervous breakdown: Escape from Freedom, 2017
robotic art

Machines on the verge of a nervous breakdown: Imprinting, 2017
robotic art

Park Earl’s Machines on the verge of a nervous breakdown series interrogates the purported differences between humans and machines. Imprinting (2017) uses robots with rational algorithms to examine the irrationality of human obsessions and fetishizations. Escape from Freedom (2017) consists of a small robot trapped in its own algorithm on a round, moving table. The table is designed to come back in place right away when it is pushed to incline towards one side. Although the audience tries to get the little robot out of its circular territory by interacting with the table, the robot can’t escape from its own world as it is caught in its own algorithm trap.

13. KIM Hyungjoong
A Printer, media installation, 2020

A Printer (2020) is composed of 12 video feedback modules arranged in the form of a grid. Video feedback is a visual effect that emerges when a camera’s output input is fed directly back into its input. This self-reproducing process creates images that are geometric and yet suggestive of natural s or organic creatures—even as they are not actual representations of any of those things. The images in this work constantly change depending on the distance between camera and display, the angle created between the two, and their surroundings. Having attempted this in various ways, Kim finally succeeded in automating this mechanism to create the work as a set of automatic image-generative modules.

14. LEE Joo-haeng
Lantana with 4x4 Pixel Stack, 2018
custom code, digital print

Line Grids Series, 2018~2020
custom code, digital print

Lantana 4×4 pixel stack (2018) is a part of a series based on the Pixel Stack operation that was developed by the artist himself to rearrange the pixels of a given image to create new ones. It comprises 16 different images generated by relocating the colourful pixels of a photograph of lantana blossoms taken by the artist.
Line Grid (2018-2020) Series reflect the investigation on relation between geometric symbols and arbitrary patterns. To create this work, he employs a variety of methods such as geometric formulae, mathematical algorithms, deep-learning style transfer and image processing.

15. KAIST Interactive Media Lab (KIML)
The Skin, 2019
interactive media installation

The Skin (2019) uses an extremely sensitive touch pad that can produce real-time measurements of eight properties of the being contacted: stiffness, Young’s modulus, static friction coefficient, kinetic friction coefficient, contact area, contact location, tangential force, and normal force. If an audience member touches its surface, the computer’s visual and auditory response gradually evolves in a way that maximizes the amount of interaction with the audience through Karl Sim’s artificial evolution process. This process is similar to that of a baby forming its relationships with its exterior world through repeated contact.

[Interactive Education Program]

16. Mangrove Artworks

My Debut Gallery, 2020
media interactive program,

My Debut Gallery (2020) is a space open to everyone and connects art created on a digital platform to an actual museum display. The audience is given a chance to create art and have it presented in the museum where normally a small number of artists would be invited to exhibit works. This is designed as a thoroughly participation-based exhibition, providing anyone with the opportunity to make their debut in the art world. From children to adults, to people overseas, to people with disabilities, whoever you are, you can upload your work through the digital interface and participate in the exhibition.

How to participate in My Debut Gallery
Download My Debut Gallery app → Upload your work → Visit the exhibition space




Art Gallery in KAIST Vision Hall
Daejeon Biennale 2020 : Intersection of Seeing
Academic Cultural Complex (E9) 1F, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon
Opening Hours : Weekdays from 10:00-17:00
Closed : Legal Holidays and Saturdays

17. BAN Seonghoon
Intersection of Seeing, 2020
interactive audio-visual installation

The exhibition Intersection of Seeing embodies the perception of the real world by a digital environment. Eight cameras are installed to constantly record the insides of the installation, forming a three-dimensional projection through the intersection of their visions. Moreover, there is a robot that moves around the installation to provide an additional point of view of the surrounding space. Thus, this work showcases how space is perceived not only through people’s point of view but also through that of a robot. Through this work, we would like to raise questions on how computers perceive reality and to think about computer vision as a subject rather than an .