In the past two years, almost nothing can capture the world's attention and imagination more than the widespread and explosive rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Since the launch of ChatGPT and AI image generators such as DALL·E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, our digital world have been flooded with AI generated contents that spread particular ideologies and lead to certain actions in a mass scale. As witnessed in the local and national elections across the globe in 2024, generative AI is utlised to shape a political landscape where "truth" can be defined, controlled and even "versionised." It seems that what we are seeing we are no longer believing. This has, already, a disruptive influence on politics and global democracies.
Composed of a custom designed real-time processing system and the open-source AI image generator Stable Diffusion, Seeds of Truth is an interactive installation that makes visible the relationship between visual representation of truth and generative AI.
Seeds of Truth invites the audience to interact and experience not only the realness and lifelikeness, but also the artificiality, absurdities and fluidity of "truth" generated by AI. By utilising generative AI from a critical viewpoint, this work aims to raise awareness and questions about how politics are consumed visually and the political nature of AI, and the consequences coming along. What are we seeing? How can we trust what we see? Does what we see tell, represent or define truth?
The exhibited work Seeds of Truth is the outcome of a pilot artistic research project Border of Democracy - Human, interface, surveillance capitalism supported by strategic fund (2023-2024) from the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.
Bio:
Albert Cheng-Syun Tang 湯承勳 (TW) is an Associate Professor in Interaction Design at Department of Design at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. As a designer and artistic researcher, his research interests are centered around the intersection of design, technology and power. This nexus has been the central context where he operates design as a medium to raise critical questions on the relationships among technological progression, surveillance capitalism and democracy.