CAC:// DKU 2021 R&C Fellowship | Open Studio: A Sigh
Open Studio:December 17, 2021 5-6pm
Venue:Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai)
Organized by CAC Lab at Chronus Art Center, Humanities Research Center of Duke Kunshan University (DKU), DKU’s Division of Arts and Humanities, DKUNST Art at DKU
CAC is pleased to announce that LI Qijing, winner of the CAC://DKU 2021 Research/Creation Fellowship will present her new project A Sigh, which is the fruition of the residency program, on Friday, December 17 at CAC, along with an Artist Talk by LI Qijing.
As all the things are designed to be functional – especially Artificial Intelligent, artist LI Qijing is desperate to see AI one day become another form of existence besides human beings – what if they become nothingness, they output only – a sigh?
The AI model of A Sigh is trained with collected diaries during this decade in China. As it finally can generate diaries for a future day on behalf of people, but it connects to a CNC machine which only outputs hot air. The diary it generates at the end become hot air. The thermal paper is exposed to the hot air and reveals a blurry shape of the text.v
Experiences are not shared among individuals, the project from the beginning is not expecting people to understand each other. Feelings just don’t flow freely from one individual to another even though you share the same language. The project simply does not intend to force anyone to understand anyone, including AIs and humans. The trained data are fed into the AI and AI makes an effort to create, but all at the end become a sigh, a breath, or a nothingness.
CAC Lab is a space dedicated to the inquiry of present-day matters regarding art, design, science, technology and their impact on global contemporary culture and society. Through artistic practice, technological tools and research methodology, we enable creative processes that result in works of art of high production and academic value. CAC Lab is a space of flux which encourages artistic practice as a generator of new knowledge, a territory where art and science converge into a contemporary and experimental field of academic research; free from mainstream cultural thought, technological stress and economical diversions.
Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center (HRC) promotes research and creative expression in the arts and humanities, and encourages interdisciplinary efforts. Working in close partnership with Duke’s Franklin Humanities Institute, the HRC functions as a key research bridge between faculty and students at Duke and DKU. In addition, the HRC facilitates co-curricular research training, treating the entire DKU campus as a laboratory for humanities research.
https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/
李启菁 (Zoe Li)
Zoe Li is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in new media art, kinetic installations and interactive installations. She investigates the abstract roles of human beings in a technological world, exploring the position of “self” within a system, which might be its cultural and historical heritage, a virtual space, or the physical world. She presents these investigations in various forms: performance, video, installation, web-based media and interactive media. Her goal is to shift perspectives away from normality as well as to raise questions to the public. The viewer is confronted with questions regarding preconceived ideas and the superficial aesthetic we take for granted.
Born in China, Zoe studied at the University of Edinburgh, UK and got her BFA at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago with a concentration on new media art. She obtained an MFA from Pratt Institute digital art program in 2020. She exhibited her project in venues such as Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, Shenzhen Art Museum, The Made in NY Media Center by IFP, NYC, Straight Through the Wall, NYC, Fake/Reality Daedalus ProjectMultimedia Art Festival, Mykonos, Greece, Latitude Gallery, NYC, Royal Society of American Art, NYC and 9th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X.
