Hypercinema Assignment Week 3 - Synthetic Media

AI Meditation led by WarNymph, Grimes

I visited Undercurrent, an exhibit drawing attention to climate crisis. The art installation, AI Meditation led by WarNymph, caught my eyes.

It was in a room shaped by two curved walls on two sides, the entrance and exit on the other two sides. One wall had a curved projection screen outlined by color-changing trip lights with speakers hidden on two sides of the screen; the other wall had a built-in platform with cushions for seating. The video content playing on the screen was computer animated and had a sci-fi, futuristic aesthetic. The voice over was narrating sentences/sequences from some sort of guided meditation, but the entire session did not sound coherent. There was also a human-like figure in the video.

Here are the photos I took of the installation.

AI Meditation led by WarNymph, Grimes - Projection

AI Meditation led by WarNymph, Grimes - Projection and Audience

After reading the artist statement, I then understood the voiceover was AI generated and learnt from meditation literature, video games and social media accounts. The voice was vocalized through deep fake technology with the artist's voice.

I consider this a synthetic media because the core investigation of this piece - the supposedly guided meditation content was generated by machine. The narration was also vocalized based on, I'm assuming, collected samples of a real person's voice. It was not actually spoken by the person.

I don't think this installation was meant to be a criticism of artificial intelligence or a negative prediction of a future without human emotions. It was, however, an interesting experiment on the vocabularies used for meditation, a human activity that relies on emotional intelligence. I also took it as an ironic portrayal of a cultural trend. In a world where people have become over-materialistic, bombarded by technology and is in a crisis of spiritual poverty, one can easily lose control over their own emotions. Hence meditation, a practice that has been around for thousands of years, is increasingly popularized.