Simulacra Buddha

We are living in an era of image explosion, and even under the super-evolution of AI, all illusions is becoming real..., almost hyperreality.

Painting is the most primitive creative activity of human beings. Through hands, It is an infinite universal universe created within a limited plane. Based on painting, I rethink the value of contemporary painting through the dialogue between art production and AI, and use it to explore the interdependent relationship between human beings and AI in the posthuman era.

Collaboration

This project is a collaboration between artist Hou, Chungying and mathematician Huang, Yanzhang, Computational Analysis and Cognitive Vision Laboratory team and ROSO Coop Robotics Laboratory.

Simulacra Buddha Project with GAN

The main goal of this research is to input the works created by the artist into the computer, and under the framework of machine learning, the computer can learn the artist's use of color, lines, and style for this work, and can evenly switch between different works , and also hope that the computer can create new forms of works with the artist's personal style.

We use the Deep Neural Network (Deep Neural Network) in artificial intelligence as a model, and input a total of about 300 electronic drawings of artists into the model, and iterate until the model converges. Unlike general machine learning, which requires large data to train computers, since artists create a small number of works, we use Generative Adversarial Network (Generative Adversarial Network) to increase the amount of effective data during the iterative process, and enhance model optimization and performance. After about three months of hard work, the high-definition 1024 x 1024 gradient image file model has been generated, and the gradient image file that imitates the artist's style will be effectively produced in the future.

Simulacra Buddha with Egg Tempera Iconography

Egg Tempera technique used in this series which I learnt at the Prince's College of Traditional Arts in the United Kingdom in 2013. The western medieval traditional iconography, on the one hand, connects the sacred tradition of painting, on the other hand, it is a metaphor for the Homo Deus after the Technological Singularity. Through the ever-changing forms of buddha, the transcendent reality of emptiness is shown.