Aijia Sun

My work begins with the collection of hundreds of data sets (and growing) representing people's gaze coordinates on screen surfaces during their everyday interactions with electronic devices. This corpus of human viewing behavior serves as a training set for AI, enabling it to learn and emulate to some extent the act of human observation.

Drawing parallels with my previous exploration of the sky, this gaze data now becomes the fuel for a novel representation of our shared celestial expanse. By employing a surveillance camera as the 'eye', I invite the trained AI to look up and observe the sky overhead.

What results from this AI-powered skyward gaze, after careful artistic processing, is a generated parallel sky—a digital reflection of our natural firmament. This resultant skyscape represents a melding of human perceptual data and machine learning, creating an alternate view of our sky, seen through the lens of AI. Much like the concept explored in the previous work, this serves to further illustrate the intertwining of human and machine perspectives and the profound questions such dynamics raise about our shared existence and perception of the world.

In our contemporary societies, the notion of limitless renewable energy has been heralded as the deus ex machina—the miraculous solution to our global resource crisis. This trend has inspired a plethora of innovative technologies, spawned new social organizations, and given rise to profitable business groups. Yet, it's crucial to question the uncritical acceptance of such 'unlimited' resources—a concept that holds the potential for myopia and irrationality. While these developments undoubtedly promise transformative change for global lifestyles, they may also veil untapped or unanticipated repercussions.

Taking a cue from the ancient Chinese tale of Kuafu Chasing the Sun and extending it to our current technologically-driven and capitalistic energy systems, we observe a common thread of consumption, or rather 'burning', inherent in our relationship with the sun. In this work, guided by principles of new animism, I devise a contemporary burning ritual—an experiential performance articulated through technological media and network data. The intent is to bring to light potential environmental and ethical quandaries born from the intertwined forces of capital and technology, painting a speculative picture of a probable future.

To substantiate this project, I've compiled data from the official websites of the world’s top 20 new energy companies as of 2022. Leveraging web crawler technology, I've orchestrated frequent automated visits to these sites, mining their corporate jargon for randomly selected texts and phrases. This harvested data coalesces into an evolving tapestry of corporate slogans that is continually updated. In conjunction, these phrases are fed into an AI algorithm, generating a dynamic image of the sun that morphs in response to these updates. The resulting visual manifestation symbolizes the oscillating and uncertain future of renewable energy under the influences of commercial and technological forces.

The tapestry’s pattern derives from the texture map used in the creation of the sun in the parent artwork. In 3D modeling, a texture map is a 2D image that wraps around a 3D object, giving it surface detail - color, texture, reflectivity, and other characteristics. By transforming the 2D texture map back into a physical artifact, I explore the interplay between the digital and physical worlds, highlighting the often overlooked materiality of the digital.

The unfolded sun in the tapestry represents a sun that has been decoded and laid bare by the mechanisms of technology. The digital sun, typically seen as a sphere, has been 'unwrapped' onto a flat plane. This deconstruction echoes the disassembly and examination of our current energy consumption practices, brought about by the digital revolution and our incessant quest for renewable energy resources.

Just as the texture map gives form to the virtual sun, our collective actions and attitudes shape our shared energy future. By laying the sun bare in a tapestry, this piece invites the viewer to consider their role in the grand scheme of energy consumption and to reflect upon the interwoven complexities of our relationships with energy, technology, and the environment.