Experience two artists’ perspectives on philosophy, science, and AI

Two artists, Xin Liu and Eunjo Lee, joined forces with Google Arts & Culture to delve into the role of artificial intelligence in shaping our perception of life and consciousness. Liu's project, "nom nom," employs neural networks to simulate living ecosystems, while Lee's "In Your Eyes, Before My Own" merges philosophy with 3D motion capture. Both digital artworks are currently available on the Google Arts & Culture website.

Liu's "nom nom" uses millions of particles that interact with each other, forming a living ecology. This simulation is based on research into artificial life and emergent computation by Google researchers Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Alexander Mordvintsev, as well as the concept of Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs). In her statement, Liu explains her desire to explore an image of intelligence distributed across millions of tiny neural networks that react to their surroundings, rather than as a singular mind above the world.

Lee's "In Your Eyes, Before My Own" takes a different approach, blending ancient philosophy with modern technology. This artwork uses AI to convert her hand-drawn sketches into 3D assets, which are then layered with motion-captured choreography and a linguistic system based on Korean Hangul phonetics. Lee views technology as a medium that reveals the philosophical and psychological aspects of our physical and digital existence.

She describes the project as a "vast alchemical laboratory" where ancient Buddhist philosophy of Indra's net manifests through neural networks.