Daydream: Li Xinmo Speaks at the Artificial Intelligence Art Project of the Goethe Institute

By Li Xinmo

This is my first time participating in artistic creation related to artificial intelligence. Up until now, my artistic work has focused mainly on drawing, painting, performance, as well as video art. Just now I saw the name "Turing" on the screen, and only then realized that Turing is the founder of artificial intelligence. This reminds me of a series of paintings centered on unconscious dreams and imaginations, which I began to work on about 13 years ago. Around the same time, I began to write a novel investigating hidden consciousness and images. The title of said novel is "Turing Handwriting". At the time I gave this title to the novel, the word "Turing" suddenly appeared in my mind, because this one word really encompasses the essence of my novel. I have always had very real and tangible imaginations, where I would be able to feel the life and soul of an image. When I paint the image of a person on a white piece of paper I can feel that person being alive and conscious, I can feel their being and existence. I do not like sketches, and I sketch very rarely. Rather, I prefer to paint directly the images straight from my innermost being, born directly out of my imagination. One could say that it is me who creates those images, but very often I do not feel as if I had created anything. Rather, these forms of life already exist. I just use the help of my brush to make them appear on the paper in front of me. All these living entities arising out of the imagination are so real, sometimes even to the extent that it becomes frightening. The novel I was talking about before is composed of both words and images, of memory, imagination, dreams, illusions, and spirituality. It is filled with consciousness of death and ubiquitous fear. Every chapter is accompanied by an image. This image is not a subsidiary or supplement, but rather an important part of the text. One could even go as far as to say that the novel is developed around these images.

 

During the three years from 2013 to 2015, I painted the images from my own dreams and illusions, just like a diary. For the largest part, they were about variation and deviations among humans. Among these variations, many of the paintings were about combinations and variants of humans and animals. In my early years, I loved mythology. There are many stories about transformation between humans and animals in ancient Greek mythology, for example the story of Leda and the Swan. In ancient Egypt, the strongest among the gods were also combinations of people and animals, as exemplified by the transformation of the outer appearance of Anubis, the god of death, to a mountain dog, or the transformation of Horus, the protection god of the Pharaohs, who appeared as a hawk. I also saw early editions of the printed illustrations in old European travel books. Thanks to the invention of navigation technology, Europeans could visit different countries and places, and they used those travel notes to depict realistically what they saw and heard. The image I remember the most profoundly is the depiction of the people living in one particular place. Those people had no head, and their eyes had grown on their chests. Until today, I am deeply captivated by this strange and unusual image. I would like to mention one more book I read when I was young. The book is called "Shan Hai Jing 山海经", which can be translated as "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and it also contains many variants of living beings that are combinations of animals and humans.

 

15 years ago, DeepDream was developed. DeepDream transforms image input by humans into images recognized by machines on the basis of artificial neural network algorithms. It combines the deep learning of neural networks with the dreamlike surreal images created by the system. Its neural network is composed of stacks of artificial neurons, and the network is almost 20 neural layers deep. Researchers train the neural networks and its visual sense through constant input and modification of the output. By passing these images through the network, every neural layer will go one step further in the analysis and integration of the things it sees. After the image has been analysed layer-by-layer, the network adjusts its parameters through the usage of feedback on the accuracy of its original guess, in order to correctly identify different objects in the next round. The final neural layer, the output layer, can skillfully determine all of the objects it knows. DeepDream's experiments show that neural networks can see what us humans can not see.

I accidentally uploaded photos of some of my works to Deep Dream. The computer's dreamlike reconstruction created images even more nightmarish than my own imagination. Animal heads and human eyes appeared on the images. I was stunned by the strange and dark quality of these new images. I had not expected the machine to look at the world in this manner. The pictures and the world I see are related closely and share many similarities. Especially similar is the way we both interpret this world as animalistic. Those special images seem like extensions of my dreams, of an obscure, hidden and dark spirit symbolizing the world. I vaguely feel that there is some kind of connection and interaction between me and this program called "deep dream", a name that also fascinates me deeply.

 

This artificial intelligence art project of the Goethe Institute reminded me of DeepDream and led me to think whether I could use it to implement some of my ideas. So I took out the related illustrations and paintings, including the ones in “Turing Handwriting”. I revisited these paintings that had emerged from my subconscious, and I wanted to see how my own dreams would change through the computer’s dreams. The result astonished me. The computer interpreted my drawings beyond my expectations and imaginations, deciphering them according to its very own understanding. The resulting images combined my visual language and DeepDream's own visual language, creating a third, alternative visual image. In fact, this final image is the result of a collaboration between the computer and me. These images are also different from the pictures resulting from the ones that are created through feeding the computer with random imagery and fully relying on the computers visual interpretation. They are also entirely apart from an artist's process of painting. Passing through the computer's dream, my own dreams have been perfected and deepened. They now have a futuristic aspect to them. I always thought that these works were a recollection of what happened in the past. But now that they have passed through the “deep dream”, I found that these images suddenly turned away from the past and towards the future. The suppression and fear that used to exist in these painting seems to have transformed into a kind of fantasy, transcending the boundaries of this world.

 

After I had uploaded my paintings to the “deep dream”, I was still already full of expectations. But when I finally saw the imagery that came out of the system, it was far beyond my imagination. The computer used its system of sensual perception and its visual experience to interpret my works so delicately. Especially its treatment of the eyes was of great sensitivity and precision, and the execution of the figures and veins imbued the images with a sense of realism. Particularly, the computer gave the images an emotional depth I had failed to achieve with the originals.

So, I began to think about whether or not I could work together with a computer, and whether it would allow me to better understand how consciousness is created and how it operates. Before, I had always researched images, and I do have a special kind of sensitivity and understanding when it comes to images. Accordingly, I hope to use images to explore and research how my own sub-consciousness is structured and how it was created in the first place. I hope to understand how memory and imagination work, as well as the relationship between them and images.

 

As a consequence, I paid even more attention to the concept of Artificial Intelligence. And the more I understand AI, the more strongly I feel about it. It feels to me as if our world is experiencing a tremendous social transformation, rapidly disassembling into pieces and drifting apart, just in order to come together again. Technology – driven by massive capital investments – is developing at an alarming pace. New inventions and ground-breaking research incessantly refresh people’s knowledge and ideas. With the Internet, digitization is no longer limited to theory, but has become our life. Indeed, the age of data-ism has already begun.

Everyone usually thinks that machines are made by people, that they are subordinate to people, serving people. Everyone also usually thinks that machines are just machines, that they do not have a life of their own. However, my opinion is just the opposite. I believe machines are also alive, especially with the continuous development of artificial intelligence. Computers with neural networks can already think and perceive like humans do, they can throw off the restrictions imposed on them by humans and learn and think on their own. People already have premonitions about the arrival of an era of powerful artificial intelligence and are at the same time full of excitement and full of anxiety about this. Just like with the appearance of “DeepDream”, people are on the one hand excited about the inventions and creations of technological advancement, but also on the other hand worried that the machine will eventually replace the artist. That is an incontestable reality. There are more and more areas that do not need people anymore, and where artificial intelligence is used to complete the work. Artificial intelligence is spreading from the field of physical labour to the area of intellectual labour, and by now it is not beyond imagination that someday most of the work in our society will not actually need people anymore. But if that happens, what else can people do? This is a problem that humanity will have to face.

 

As everyone has discussed just now, human society has already gradually been subject to digitization, and the vast amounts of data so created are owned and controlled by only a small number of large companies. What is even more crucial is that data, the internet, and artificial intelligence are all manipulated by capital and politics. Capitalists use data to analyse and calculate consumer groups and how to stimulate their purchasing desires. Politicians use the internet and data to get more votes for themselves, and to create wrong policies. A good example has just been mentioned earlier: how Donald Trump was elected president as the result of manipulation by an internet company. There are also GPS, online identity registration systems, and other mechanisms that leave people in a state of constant exposure and a loss of privacy. While people are enjoying all the comforts and convenience brought about by the internet, they are also at the same time losing even more things. People become controlled and monitored, and gradually more and more informatized and digitized. Everybody is worried about the internet, and artificial intelligence, and maintaining a critical attitude. But in my opinion, everything has two sides, and the more benefits one gets, the more one may be losing at the same time. People’s search for the unknown, and their pursuit of new technologies are difficult to stop. In fact, advances in technology and science have indeed improved people’s lives. From the improvement of medical care to the acceleration of information dissemination, technological and scientific advances have brought more convenience and protection to people’s lives. But, at the same time, people have no choice but to face the paradoxes of technological and scientific advancement. I think everything is worth reflecting on, but only being anxious is not enough. What is more important is to think about how we can deal with these paradoxes. As I said before, everything has two sides, and so does artificial intelligence. However, I also believe that the development of science and technology in itself cannot constitute a reason for us to oppose it. Rather, we have to see who is using these technologies. Science and technology are in the hands of capitalists and politicians. All they do is use technology to maximize their profits. They use technology, and make it serve politics and capital. But what if we imagine artists mastering these technologies? This is also the topic I am personally most invested in.

 

I am envisioning a relationship of cooperation between man and machine. This is also precisely what I did in my work, simply working with artificial intelligence to explore in more depth how consciousness works. This is what I have always been concerned about. It is also a problem that many scientists are concerned about, and it is also the most important issue in the field of artificial intelligence research. I think that human understanding of human beings is very narrow and limited, and that also the understanding of universal consciousness is still in its infancy. People actually use artificial intelligence to try to explore how consciousness works. Through all the experiments I made I was hoping to discover the deep secrets of consciousness formation and operation in the work of artificial intelligence. At the same time, I also wanted to explore how a machine thinks, and what kind of a revelation I could get from the machine’s working. I found that people's thinking shows patterns, but that the same is also true for machines. These patterns may be a limitation and hindrance. I try to find and repair those limitations in my own work and try to thereby overcome the fixed ways of thought and thinking by which both humans and machines are limited. Thus, the Artificial Intelligence and I will continue to constantly modify each other's consciousness, and we will see what the result of this in the end will be.

Nowadays, human beings are also experiencing deep crisis. I feel more and more that the existing knowledge and knowledge systems are very narrow and limited. People in this limited cultural world have erected various barriers and partitions, including ideological ones. In terms of knowledge and belief, people are mired in constant conflict and problems. On top of that, there are problems with the social system and mode of social construction. Although everyone is criticizing the global expansion of capitalism and its control over people, people have yet to invent a new kind of new knowledge system, a new model of social operation, to bring about change in peoples’ thinking patterns and behaviors. I increasingly feel that it has been very difficult to solve certain problems in the existing systems of thought, such as gender issues, religious issues, and problems of social justice. These problems are inherent to this culture, as people continue to fight, to sacrifice, just to finally realize an outcome that is not ideal. Sometimes it may even come to the opposite. The world as a whole is still in a state of fanaticism that is either irrational or over-rational. This is caused actually by the physical and mental confusion of people. Towards a great many things, people behave with a very low level of understanding and knowledge. I also wonder whether through the development of artificial intelligence it is possible to transform and re-define human beings, in order to gain greater wisdom, including about the perception of space and time as well as the redefinition of humankind, including the exploration of consciousness. I wonder whether it can bring about a new world, where people have escaped from the control of physical desires to free their consciousness and achieve more connection with cosmic consciousness through their own independence. In such a new world, those peoples’ understanding and knowledge and the structure of their society would definitely be entirely different. The difficulties of mankind at our present stage will be solved. Perhaps we would even be able to deal with other problems and crises, but those are matters for the future.

All of this is just a vague idea of mine, and there may well be no way to realize it. It is only a dream. But I believe this is the work of an artist: to simply work for the realization of a dream.