Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder in Vienna, Austria recently concluded their third solo exhibition of work by Chinese artist Miao Ying. Shadows stretch in spectral lines, in desolation’s embrace, time resigns, ran from November 29, 2023 – January 27, 2024, and featured paintings based on landscape imagery created collaboratively with an artificial intelligence (AI) programme. These paintings were accompanied by a demonstration of the programme itself, which created fantastical video game-themed landscapes in real time. Gallery Director Samuel Mizrachi joins STIR to discuss the exhibition.

Ying is a contemporary artist trained from the age of ten in the Socialist Realism style; however, in recent years, her focus has shifted to new media through AI art and digital technology. For the Training Landscapes series, the artist worked with an AI model trained imperfectly on a gaming engine. These engines are workspaces that enable developers to craft game environments, which is what Ying took a particular interest in with this series. The AI model drew from a wide selection of video game elements, commonly known as “assets”, to build its own glitchy, isometric scenes. These have a decidedly fantasy-themed touch to them and are evocative of games such as Diablo.

The production process for Training Landscapes did not end with the digital art created by the AI model. In fact, the first AI was one of two used for the project. The second brought life to the first’s scenes through various effects, reminiscent of the way magical combat was depicted in older fantasy games. This was achieved by having multiple AI-controlled algorithms, or “brains” as Mizrachi describes them, “fight” each other. From here, an amateur human artist took over, attempting their best to recreate what they were witnessing. Finally, Ying herself worked on the results, using glazing techniques she has honed since childhood. Mizrachi explores the interplay between human and AI participants in the process, telling STIR, “Those elements (assets) were decomposed and then reformed when the trained AI brains were fighting in the background of the landscape. The paintings were then executed by trained Realism painters, trying to mimic computer effects that are generated by AI with their skill, just like the AI in the work is trying to mimic human behaviour.”

Everyone has to face the rise of AI, not only artists. We should learn to work with it but also be very vigilant of the cost of having it. – Samuel Mizrachi, Gallery Director, Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder

As Mizrachi explains, the digital artist wished to question what intelligence and artificial intelligence truly is through the layers of abstraction that separate her original subject matter and the finished paintings shown at the exhibition. The Chinese artist began with a look into object and environmental placeholders that form the backdrop of the “Hero’s Journey” meta-narrative that persists throughout storytelling, as it is seen in video games. Through the project’s dance of human and AI inputs, she has revealed that both human artists and AI are prone to error, resulting from a lack of sufficient training.

While one may feel that the works in Training Landscapes signify a common ground between human beings and AI, Mizrachi takes a different stance on the art exhibition. When asked how we should place these pieces within the wider discourse surrounding AI and contemporary art, he tells STIR, “Everyone has to face the rise of AI, not only artists. We should learn to work with it but also be very vigilant of the cost of having it.” Perhaps Mizrachi is thinking beyond what the show presents: Perhaps, it is the tendency to improve that the lack of mastery signifies, that he is more concerned with, rather than an attempt to reconcile human artists and their AI counterparts. Today, social media is filled with an endless stream of commentators who lampoon AI for its current inaccuracy in representative image-making, and those who engage in this discourse may be under the impression that it will never be able to replace us. However, audiences to Shadows stretch in spectral lines, in desolation’s embrace, time resigns should see the immediacy of revising such a stance, paying due consideration to the journey of an artist, from amateurish sketches of trees to masterful landscapes. And then, of course, remains the unmatched speed at which AI can produce imagery, as well as the low cost of using the technology.