Machine Visions

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The Professors from Hong Kong Baptist University Peter A C Nelson and Roberto Alonso Trillo, and visiting musician and creative technologist Marek Poliks will be presenting Machine Visions at Osage Gallery, a renowned Hong Kong venue for experimental and cutting-edge art, from 19 November 2022 to 4 February 2023. The new exhibition and performance series will feature VR, animation, paintings, sculptures and music that are all made using new creative artificial intelligence tools developed in Hong Kong.

Machine Visions, the result of a 2-year collaborative project at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Augmented Creativity Lab asks what a future dominated by artificial intelligence tools may look, sound, and feel like. In addition to an array of AI-generated art, including animations of human motion, three-dimensional objects, and classical music, visitors will also be treated to a series of free performance events featuring musicians from around the globe. This program explores how AI-assisted tools are created and to reflect on how AI is changing the world around us.

“Every major shift in technology creates a major shift in our culture, and it is our culture that absorbs, reflects, and gives meaning to these changes. The artworks and musical performances presented in Machine Visions are all created using AI and machine learning. We hope to make a modest contribution to a rapidly evolving conversation about how AI is changing our approaches to creation – our most human trait,” said Peter A C Nelson, Artist and Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts and the Augmented Creativity Lab at Hong Kong Baptist University

“The internet culture is absorbing and reacting to the rapid development of AI-assisted creative tools such as MidJourney, Dall-e, and Stable Diffusion. The common factor of these tools is a change in human cultural production, where we are now sampling our own history directly as a dataset and recreating the new from a computational interpretation of the old,” added Roberto Alonso Trillo, Associate Professor of the Department of Music at the Hong Kong Baptist University.

Professor Johnny M POON, Associate Vice-President (Interdisciplinary Research) at the Hong Kong Baptist University, said “Hong Kong Baptist University has become a hub for innovation in art and technology, and I’m absolutely thrilled to see the results of these projects being produced by some of our professors at the School of Creative Arts!”

The exhibition will begin from 19 November 2022 to the 4th of February 2023 with five performances featuring local and international musicians and dancers. Supported by Hong Kong Baptist University’s Augmented Creativity Lab and Osage Gallery, the exhibition is open to the public.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Peter A C Nelson has been living in Hong Kong since 2015 when he moved here to complete his Ph.D. in computer games at City University Hong Kong. Now an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, he gives public lectures and presentations on new developments in art and technology, exhibits ink paintings with HanArt TZ Gallery, and manages several projects at HKBU’s Augmented Creativity Lab.

Roberto Alonso Trillo is a renowned classical violin performer who began working with Nelson in 2019 at the Augmented Creativity Lab, where they have pioneered several technological approaches, from hacking classical instruments to developing the machine learning tools in this exhibition. A published author in late Baroque music, Trillo is a unique voice in observing the relationship between classical cultural practices and technological innovation.

Marek Poliks is a musician and creative technologist, he will be visiting Hong Kong for the first time to perform with Trillo and Nelson at Osage Gallery. A Harvard-educated musician turned creative technologist, Poliks has worked closely with Trillo to develop the cutting-edge software driving this exhibition.