“Art”ificial 我开始扭曲了

For Kishi Yuma, artificial intelligence is a kaleidoscope through which we can see humanity from dazzling, unexpected perspectives. At times the Japanese artist’s works can be unsettling, with human faces contorting into unnatural positions. But it can also be profoundly soothing, with a flower bouquet morphing seamlessly into a woman in a pastel dress and back again.

Despite the capabilities of AI, There’s a certain anxiety surrounding the technology, rooted in the fear that sentient systems might replace us. Kishi sees the current state of AI differently: “I define AI not as something that imitates human intelligence, but as something completely alien that crafts from an entirely original point of view.”

Kishi, based in Tokyo, is an AI researcher and artist who seeks to better understand what technology can teach us about ourselves. Though AI art is still far from mainstream, he has recently worked with high-profile clients such as Vogue Italia and Nike, signalling that its widespread use may not lie too far in the distant future. In working on these projects, Kishi says that an exciting aspect was “achieving expressions no human could ever expect.” However, he also discovered that further research is still necessary to make AI art more suitable for commercial work.

Kishi primarily uses a type of neural network called a Generative Adversarial Network, or GAN for short. First conceived of in 2014 by Ian Goodfellow, a GAN actually comprises two networks which compete with each other—hence the ‘adversarial’ in its name. Like a forger making counterfeits, one network generates fake images and tries to trip up the other network into thinking they are real. At the same time, the other network tries to sniff out the counterfeits. By pitting the two networks against each other, they each get smarter as the generated fakes appear more and more realistic—in many cases even fooling the human eye.

Kishi explains that the beauty of this process is that it requires no direct human input. What’s more, since machines cannot strictly ‘see’ like humans do, the GAN learns to represent a single 2D image with 512 different numbers, or dimensions. As a result, what is ultimately created by the GAN is on an “unimaginable spectrum,” even from his own point of view.

For Kishi, AI can offer a completely new, unadulterated look at reality. Humans have biases, expectations, and preconceptions; it’s very hard for a person to break out of their normal mode of seeing—what he calls the “impossibility of pure vision.” With its unbiased view, Kishi muses that AI may present new insights to solve the countless challenges facing humanity today.

His work often features a human form, a nod to humans who may one day use AI as a tool. Citing a book by Andy Clark titled Natural-born Cyborgs, he notes that humans have always wielded technology in unexpected ways, even augmenting their bodies. “From a higher perspective, we do not understand all its mechanisms, though our arms, legs, or heart are indeed part of ourselves… wristwatches used by businessmen could be said as a part of their skin; for teenagers, a smartphone could be defined the same,” Kishi explains.

Our relationship to everyday objects was a common motif in the work of 20th century French-American artist Marcel Duchamp, one of Kishi’s influences. Duchamp rejected the notion that art must be beautiful to the eye and implored the viewer to shift their perspective of what art is. Kishi explains, “If I were to borrow Duchamp’s words, that would be ‘Art is choice.’ Since the beginning, I have believed that no matter how great an AI crafts a piece of work, it would never be able to stand by itself without the choices made by humans.”

The value of choice in Kishi’s piece The Bride’s Clothed Up By You, Even is one of the clearest showcases of Duchamp’s influence. In the installation, Kishi’s AI mutates a rotating bouquet of flowers into a woman and back again in a loop. When a viewer sees a frame they like, they can stop the generation of images, which ultimately becomes an act of curation. The title of the piece plays off of the 1915-1923 work by Duchamp The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. Like Duchamp, Kishi is a fan of wordplay; In this project, he plays on the  Japanese term, “bride” which is hana-yome (花嫁) a combination of “flower” and “matron,” the subject matters of this piece.

Kishi’s own story of becoming an artist is an unlikely one. Though his father was an oil painter who received many awards, Kishi explains he did not provide a particularly stable life for his family. Consequently, Kishi’s mother persuaded him to take a stable career path. But the more he immersed himself in science, the more he became interested in expanding his knowledge, which eventually led him to study Deep Learning and its use as a tool in image creation. “In order to research its possibilities, I became an artist; strangely the exact same occupation as that of my father,” he muses.

To what extent do the tools we use shape the choices we make, and vice versa? This question is central to Kishi’s work as he looks to the future, where AI might change the way we see humanity entirely. His hope is that more AI art—made possible by advances in tools like GAN—will emerge to challenge people’s understanding of reality and bring about new perspectives. Each iteration of Kishi’s distorted face or morphing flower is a glimpse into our behaviors and quirks as humans from an unprecedented perspective, and Kishi is constantly at work pushing forward into the unknown. With each image, sound, or video interpreted through the lens of AI, we stand a better chance at achieving a greater understanding of our biases, choices, and imperfections—what it means to be human.

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Contributors: Eugene Lee, Lia Coleman
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li