WEBZINE ACC

In 1826, the world's first successful photograph was taken by Niépce, and subsequent advancements in photography by Daguerre, who built upon Niépce's work, led to significant impact on the genre of painting, which was confined to the realm of representation at the time. The debate between painting and photography became a major discourse in art history starting in the 19th century.

In 1936, the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin wrote in his book <The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction>, “People have wasted much insight by pondering the question of whether photography is art. However, they have failed to address the more fundamental question that should come before, namely, whether the invention of photography has fundamentally changed the nature of art as a whole.”

In 2016, there was a historic match between AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program developed by Google's DeepMind, and the world Go champion, Lee Sedol. The match ended with AlphaGo winning 4 games to 1. After nearly two decades since IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, this event marked not only a glimpse of the historic revolution that artificial intelligence would achieve but also the beginning of a tremendous impact.

Nowadays, we have entered the era of generative AI, represented by models like ChatGPT. Indeed, there are numerous examples of generative AI models such as Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Bing, Meta’s Llama, Amazon’s Bedrock, Naver’s HyperCLOVA X, etc. The wave of artificial intelligence is making a comprehensive impact on the field of art as well.

In 2016, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity awarded the Cyber Grand Prix to the Next Rembrandt project. Next Rembrandt was an artificial intelligence project developed collaboratively by Microsoft, the Rembrandt House Museum, and Dutch scientists. It involved training the AI using over 300 Rembrandt artworks to create new pieces in the style of Rembrandt.

Furthermore, in 2018, a portrait of Edmond Belamy, created by the AI AICAN developed by Rutgers University, was sold for USD 432,500 at the renowned auction house Christie’s. Just like the debate over whether photography was art or not a century ago, artworks created by artificial intelligence have now redefined the meaning of art and artistic creations.

The Asia Culture Center (ACC) is known to the citizens of Gwangju as a cultural complex that exhibits artwork, hosts cultural events such as concerts, theater performances, and musicals, and provides a space for children’s experiences and learning in ACC Children. However, it also serves as an Arts & Creative Technology Center, functioning as a platform for networking creative talent from around the world. Ultimately, the sustainability of cultural and artistic spaces relies on the creation of new artists and their innovative work. The <ACC Interactive Art Research and Development> that is being introduced here is an extension of that principle.

ACC is not architecturally a vertical space but a horizontal space. As a result, all exhibition halls and performance spaces are located underground. Among the numerous entrances that lead underground, if you take the escalator from the Hanul Madang facing Dongmyeong-dong down to the Culture Creation Center, as a first artistic object of the day, visitors will experience the magnificent digital signage displaying videos from the ceiling of the escalator. In the past, as part of the Gwangju Biennale event, the installation of public follies in various locations throughout Gwangju city provided static accents to the urban space of everyday life. However, nowadays, the diverse media walls in Gwangju offer dynamic accents to the urban space, revitalizing standardized or mundane city spaces.

It would be easy to understand this ACC Workshop as a kind of media art that fills spaces such as media walls or digital signage as mentioned before. If painters in the past completed their artworks by using brushes to apply paint to canvas, today’s media artists sit in front of computers, typing prompts or coding programs.

Midjourney, one of the representative image generators in the era of generative AI, allows users to generate new images simply by typing specific details (style, facial expression, age, nationality, hair color, background, emotions, etc.) as prompts. The artificial intelligence then generates the desired image accordingly.

OpenFrameWorks is an open-source library based on the programming language C++, designed for creative coding purposes. If AI like Midjourney is capable of generating images, OpenFrameWorks can be considered a program that enables interaction by connecting physical devices such as sensor cameras, mice, microphones, infrared sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and more.

If we considered the domains of artists and technicians to be different until now, it can be said that artificial intelligence has now broken down the boundaries between artists and technicians. Just like Leonardo da Vinci, who can be considered a prototype of a Renaissance figure that combined artistry and technical skills, art has never been far from technology. Just as the advent of photography two hundred years ago revolutionized the art world, now, generative artificial intelligence sparked by ChatGPT is also expanding the meaning of art and demanding a shift in the role of artists. Indeed, whether it’s painting with a brush or sculpting, writing prompts and coding programs still remain the roles of human beings.