2022 aai International Conference

2022 aai International Conference on art (ai) is an international conference under the theme of artificial imagination. Artists, scientists and academia will gather to talk about AI arts and quantum thinking. Sabine Himmelsbach (HEK Basel) and Adrian Notz (ETH AI Center) are invited as guest speakers at the conference.

Introduction

Aiiiii Art Center and the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab of Tongji University (aai) will organize the annual international conference on AI Art on May 28 and 29, 2022. The conference’s theme is “artificial imagination”, combining the most groundbreaking research from diverse fields ranging from art, design, physics, computer science, media philosophy, and sci-fi literature. The definition, possibility, and potential of an artificial imagination inspired by the recent developments in the quantum computing area will be explored during the conference, which will offer an interdisciplinary inspiration for scholars, artists, and professionals from different backgrounds.

Theme

The cat is out of the box. Or in the box. Or both.

Erwin Schrödinger stated that if you place a cat and something that could kill the cat (a radioactive atom) in a box and seal it, you will not know if the cat is dead or alive until you open the box, which is to say that, until the box is opened, the cat can be (in some sense) both “dead and alive”. What does it feel like to be both alive and dead? Quantum theory implies a way of thinking that accommodates into a probabilistic framework the superposition principle, i.e. the existence of complementarity: it is, and it is not, as for the Schroedinger cat. When microscopic particles are not observed, all possibilities exist simultaneously. When the observation leads to a mutation of one state into another, it can disturb the measurement process. All matter has a wave-particle duality, assuming a fluctuating (probabilistic) nature when it is not observed and a particle nature (realistic) when it is observed. Quantum mechanics breaks the dichotomy between matter and consciousness, and consciousness cannot be excluded from the objective world.

What does it feel like to be the observer and the observed at the same time? By following the observer effect, we might ask what if the artist and the artwork coincide? When applying artificial intelligence to art, we go beyond human logic by introducing a quantum logic totally inconceivable to the human mind. What a quantum artwork might encompass are myriads of patterns that the so-called “artist” might only allow to collapse into a single possible artwork. The artist acts just like the observer of an experiment in the sense that it constrains the potentially infinite patterns to collapse into a single artwork. In this sense, quantum computation is the witness of realities hidden from the world we see, touch, or experience. The traditionally linear patterns of control behind the creation of the artwork, in which the artist is the creator, and the artwork is the product of the artist, become obsolete to the extent that the artist becomes the negation of the universal mind, the “nous” of the Greek tradition, in which being and non-being as much as any other distinction are encompassed and overcome.

AI Art can only be understood through AI. Not Artificial Intelligence, but Artificial Imagination. Instead of human imagination, can artificial imagination explore an unimaginable territory? In this conference, we would like to explore the definition, possibility, and potential of artificial imagination. When it comes to artificial imagination, how can one imagine what one’s mind cannot grasp? How can something be capable of imagination but not be human? Unbeknownst to us, is there another ‘us’? And if so, if there is a better ‘us’, then why do we need us? For whom is Artificial Imagination intended? Why is AI different from art? Even though AI appears as if it emerged out of nowhere, has it always been with us? Will AI be the “other” way to touch the future?

Swiss Speakers