Artists

Chen-Yu Chen

Chen-Yu Chen

Chen-Yu Chen Chen-Yu Chen now lives and works in Taipei. His works examine the landscapes under the construction of digital industrialization and globalization of…

Aleksandra Jovanić

Aleksandra Jovanić

Aleksandra Jovanić Aleksandra Jovanić is an artist and programmer from Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a doctorate in Digital Arts and a BSc in Computer…

Emi Kusano

Emi Kusano

Emi Kusano Emi Kusano, a Tokyo-based multidisciplinary artist, creates hyper realistic representations of collective and individual memories using AI technology. Her work, gracing the…

Ivona Tau

Ivona Tau

Ivona Tau Driven by what she calls the “metaphysical act of imagination,” Tau’s practice explores the transformation of cityscapes into both utopian and dystopian…

Sasha Stiles

Sasha Stiles

Sasha Stiles Sasha Stiles is first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, language artist, and AI researcher working at the nexus of text and technology, known for her…

Tomo Kihara & Daniel Coppen

Tomo Kihara & Daniel Coppen

Tomo Kihara Tomo Kihara is an artist and game developer creating experimental games and public installations. His work often takes the form of embodied…

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No body makes its own bodies
No body makes its own bodies

Artist

Chen-Yu Chen

Chen-Yu Chen now lives and works in Taipei. His works examine the landscapes under the construction of digital industrialization and globalization of Capital, and the inter-activities between humans, commodities, and images. Working with moving images, objects, and installations, his practice often juxtaposes various media and examines how beliefs, desires, and anxieties are materially distributed in social production. His works, on the one hand, depict the phenomena created by re/production, consumption, and extraction, on the other hand, they explore the interpenetrative relationship and boundaries between humans, objects, and the environment.

Artworks

No body makes its own bodies

2024
gesso, clay, fabrics, resin, wax, metal

How do we imagine the body—our own, others’, the body as an object, or the gendered body? Social media images blend the material of identity politics, making the understanding of the body a sticky, dynamic interplay of ideologies. The transformation of the body is heated by the mediated process of dopamine transmission, melting like sugar—sweet and sticky, as promised. With a flick of a finger or two, we can gather and craft a magnificent cotton candy in any form. Just like the animal-shaped clouds projected by our imagination, they are a mix of sweet granules and saliva-coated fantasies.

The narrative of fleeting excitement spills over the screens, pouring out various potential fluids/solutions, submerging everything around. Different bodies become wetland sculptures of imagined forms, testing their stickiness—how thick and ornate they can be layered, or how quickly they will dissolve.

Latitudes
The Space in Between
Billows

Artist

Aleksandra Jovanić

Aleksandra Jovanić is an artist and programmer from Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a doctorate in Digital Arts and a BSc in Computer Science. In her research and artistic practice she combines various media, mainly in the field of interactive art, art games, and generative art.

Jovanić’s recent works focus on the aesthetics of data visualization and optical illusions, as well as explorations of accepted concepts of truth and reality. Her work has been exhibited internationally in exhibitions at Unit London, Feral File, Vellum LA, ArtBlocks, and ArtBasel.

As an associate professor, she currently teaches at all three levels of study, at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, at master studies of the Faculty of Applied Arts, and at art doctoral studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade.

Artworks

Latitudes

2024
video

03'00"

Latitudes is a series of infinite animations in which a number of long extruded shapes travel in set directions with only minimal deflections. On their journey, the shapes cross over one another while occasionally encountering loops, beams, and numbered asteroids. Where are they going? Who are they? Will their fall or race ever end? Where is the finish line?

[…] unwound in continuous, parallel, straight lines that mean nothing beyond themselves in their constant flow, never meeting, just as we never meet in our constant fall […]” - The Form of Space, Italo Calvino

The Space in Between

2024
video

03'00"

The positive and negative spaces are making a reference to life emerging through cracks in the concrete. The active area is a block of hand-painted gradient color and an undulating cluster of plant-like organisms.

Billows

2024
media video

03'00"

“Billowy bodies with celestial impressions heaping onto one another; spreading, shifting, drifting.” from A Meditation on the Endless Appeal of Clouds in Artby Charmaine Li

A peculiar connection between various latent states and billowing bodies is traced; between the figures we see in clouds and pseudo-random configurations we recognize as clouds.

Although algorithms in generative art lend themselves to creating an infinite variety of latent images, latent images are more commonly associated with film development in analog photography as an “invisible configuration of silver halide crystals on a piece of film after exposure to image-bearing focused light” — when the image has been exposed, but not yet revealed.

＊DAFT x VolumDAO outdoor screening project

Morphing Memory of Neural Fad
Morphing Memory of Neural Fad #2

Artist

Emi Kusano

Emi Kusano, a Tokyo-based multidisciplinary artist, creates hyper realistic representations of collective and individual memories using AI technology. Her work, gracing the cover of WWD Japan and featured in Christie's and Gucci auctions, has been internationally exhibited at venues like the Saatchi Gallery, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and Grand Palais Immersif. She is also known as a former creative director and co-founder of Japan's first Web3 anime studio, "Shinsei Galverse".

Artworks

Morphing Memory of Neural Fad

2023
Video
05'00";05'31"

Morphing Memoryseries reimagines Tokyo street fashion history and analyzes the connection between AI and memory. Based on Kusano’s “Neural Fad” post-photography collection, this video series visualizes the youth's nonexistent rebellious spirit and seamlessly transitions through eras. Detailed camera work and dynamic movement immerse viewers in digital scenes, accompanied by music that captures the unique atmosphere of fashion from different times.

Before the digital era, local magazines and TV were the catalysts for youth movements, shaping the Moga and Mobo of the 1940s to the Japanese hippies known as the Fūten Tribe, the Karasu Tribe of the 80s, and the Gyaru and Decora fashion of the late 90s and early 2000s. Amid today’s information overload and mass fashion consumption, this artwork attempts to reconsider AI’s role in reviving the history of street style once shaped by localized media.

＊DAFT x VolumDAO outdoor screening project

Consciousness Horizons
Consciousness Horizons
Consciousness Horizons

Artist

Ivona Tau

Driven by what she calls the “metaphysical act of imagination,” Tau’s practice explores the transformation of cityscapes into both utopian and dystopian realms, filtered through subjective memory and emotional interpretation. A fascination with photography began early for Tau, who grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania documenting the shifting post-Soviet world through her grandfather’s Lomo LC-A camera. This early exploration of color and texture evolved into a broader dialogue between the physical and digital worlds, which continues to shape her artistic approach today.

By training her own AI models – which she views as personal tools akin to a painter’s brush – Tau breathes life into cities long past, akin to the breath of gods in ancient creation myths. Her art captures the symbiotic relationship between human memory and AI, mirroring the interconnectedness of the Chimera’s organs, where technology becomes an extension of human perception.

Artworks

Consciousness Horizons Series: Winter Evening, Post Dawn, Sunset, Before Dusk, Supernova

2021-2022
video
06'26"

In Consciousness Horizons, Ivona Tau explores the relationship between memory, technology, and emotion. This generative AI series transforms personal photography into fluid landscapes, reflecting the fragmented and ambiguous nature of urban life as remembered and felt. Works like Winter Evening, Post Dawn, Sunset, Before Dusk, and Supernova evoke the mythological essence of the Chimera, with multiple realities woven together at the intersection of memory and machine.

Filtered through subjective memory and emotional interpretation, Tau’s hybrid process—using her own AI models as personal tools akin to a painter’s brush—breathes life into cities long past. This process investigates the tension between chaos and order, digital and organic. Inspired by artists like Man Ray, Dora Maar, and David Lynch, she creates immersive pieces that examine the evolving connection between society, nature, and technology.

＊DAFT x VolumDAO outdoor screening project

Cursive Binary: Fragments (2024 remix) photo_MarcusPeel
A RESTLESS MIND(2024)
A RESTLESS MIND(2024)

Artist

Sasha Stiles

Sasha Stiles is first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, language artist, and AI researcher working at the nexus of text and technology, known for her pioneering experiments with generative literature and blockchain poetics. Her practice refracts heritage and tradition through disruptive explorations of creativity and consciousness, probing the role of human voice in a machine age. Stiles has been recognized by MoMA, Art Basel, Christie’s, NPR, Artforum and Gucci, and received the first AI in Art Award of Distinction from the Prix Ars Electronica. ​A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, co-founder of theVERSEverse, and longtime poetry mentor to humanoid android BINA48, Stiles lives near New York City with her husband and studio partner, Kris Bones.

Artworks

Cursive Binary: Fragments (2024 remix)

2024
video
03'00"

AI-powered poetry translated into Cursive Binary, a proposed language for human-machine collaboration, performed by Stiles, with music by Kris Bones.

A Restless Mind

2024
video
03'17"

Unique media-rich palimpsest of A Restless Mind, an original poem written and performed by Stiles and her AI alter ego, Technelegy, using a suite of next-gen poetic devices, augmented with electronically enhanced spoken word and music created in collaboration with Kris Bones. The third work in “FOUR CORE TEXTS: HUMANIFESTO AND OTHER POEMS”, A Restless Mind meditates on the boundless landscape of consciousness, the probabilities of emergent sentience, and the constant struggle for clarity and calm in the vortex of modern existence. It is inspired in part by a line by Emily Dickinson: "The Brain—is wider than the Sky—" (c. 1862). From "FOUR CORE TEXTS: HUMANIFESTO AND OTHER POEMS," a quartet of transhuman poems powered by the ever-evolving technology of language.

＊DAFT x VolumDAO outdoor screening project

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car
How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car
How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car

Artist

Tomo Kihara

Tomo Kihara is an artist and game developer creating experimental games and public installations. His work often takes the form of embodied playable thought experiments that invite everyone to explore new questions around socio-technical issues through play. Recent projects focusing on AI's social impact have been developed in collaboration with institutions such as Waag Futurelab (Amsterdam) and the Mozilla Foundation (USA). His works have been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, 2022) and the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, 2024).

Daniel Coppen

Daniel Coppen (GB) is an artist and designer exploring the nature of relationships between society and technology through the medium of play. Operating as Playfool, together with his partner Saki Maruyama, his practice comprises objects, installations, and multimedia productions, which emphasize play's experimental, reflective and intimate qualities. Playfool’s works have been awarded in both the Dezeen Award (2021) and STARTS Prize (2024), and have been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 2023) and Ars Electronica (Linz, 2024).

Artworks

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car

Co-created with Daniel Coppen (Playfool)

2023
LED panel, AI-model, computer, button, pressure-pad

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car is a game installation that challenges people to cross a virtual street undetected by an AI-powered self-driving car simulation. Players, each marked with a pedestrian detection score determined by the algorithm, must cleverly disguise themselves to reduce their score and avoid detection. Successful evasion exposes both the system's blindspots and inability to recognise diverse individuals, like children or wheelchair users, highlighting the risks posed by these flawed algorithms in real-world scenarios. Each victory generates edge case data showcasing the AI's biases and flaws. Upon winning, players can choose to contribute the data to improve the model or delete it, raising questions about the trade-offs in developing these technologies. The project addresses geographical bias in AI data collection by organizing global exhibitions to engage a wider range of demographics.

Credits

Music: Plot Generica
Commission: Playable City Sandbox 2023 supported by MyWorld
7-9PM, 2 November - Dream of Kandinsky....... see you on the Future Square in C-LAB