The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is currently presenting New Work: Samson Young, a solo exhibition from the acclaimed Hong Kong-based artist. The show is Young’s first solo show on the West Coast of the United States of America, and debuts his multimedia installation Intentness and songs (2024). The exhibition runs from December 21, 2024 – June 22, 2025, and is curated by SFMOMA’s Karen Cheung, curatorial associate of media arts,  and Alison Guh, assistant curator of painting and sculpture. Cheung discussed the installation in greater depth with STIR.

Intentness and songs features two artificial intelligence (AI)-powered memory recall systems that both produce visuals and audio in response to data focusing on Young’s personal life, and specifically on his relationship with his husband Tommy. The first system uses one of several AI models to pick a week at random from the artist’s Google Calendar logs between 2011 – 2023, turning the data from that week into a series of letters and numbers. These are then used to generate visuals that are cast through a projector and played on a smaller screen as well. They also generate audio that plays on speakers embedded in small polyhedron columns.

The second memory recall system plays out on a screen mounted on the side of the exhibition space, as well as through a spherical speaker. This memory recall system uses an AI model to read through interviews conducted with Young and his husband about topics such as their first meeting, their wedding and other memories of their marriage. Every time the AI comes across a memory, it logs the duration of that memory, producing a rectangle in response to its length, along with a timestamp. Once fifty recalls are accumulated, it triggers a sound event, where each recall causes an audio file to play. These files are excerpts from a choral piece Young composed called When He Said, with words from a poem by New Zealand-based author and photographer Madeline Slavick. The singers are from the Chinese University of Hong Kong student chorus.

The AI-generated visuals across the exhibition feature prose, along with numbers, shapes and, in the case of the large projection, a live feed from Young’s studio in Hong Kong. The prose is generated in the styles of various poets, such as Allen Ginsberg and Yusef Komunyakaa. Cheung discusses the installation, telling STIR, “We have now grown more accustomed to the use of machines as extensions of memories – we record and document almost every moment of our lives – and we often associate these technological tools with greater capacities and efficiencies in recalling information. But the AI models programmed by Samson aren’t simply concerned with those capabilities…The generative responses are unpredictable and suggest different perceived realities of past events. He has built a memory machine with diverse sensibilities to explore how we want to remember, and lets AI lead us into an imaginative realm of remembrance that travels beyond human memory.”

The floor of the exhibition space is filled with two kinds of boards, arranged in rows of 14. Each row features 12 wooden boards and two 3D printed boards. The wooden boards develop a context for Young’s identity, featuring graphics developed through drawings, for which the artist traced the outlines of news headline images, images from an archive of Hong Kong Urban Council activities, screenshots of TV shows, file icons on his computer and imagery from his Google calendar. The 3D printed panels contain objects of significance to the artist and his husband. For example, there is an audio cable that features in a collaboration with the product designer Kayo Tokuda. The same board also features an anklet from the artist’s husband, previously worn by Tommy’s younger brother and younger sister as well.

Returning to the role of AI in the installation, one may be left wondering how programs operating through algorithmic processes interpret the human love that has driven Intentness and songs. Cheung herself is unsure, but tells STIR, “What I have noticed is that some of the AI systems’ responses express an understanding of relationships as intimate and intricate life experiences.” She ends her interview with STIR with a particularly powerful piece of prose developed by one of the AI models: “In the quiet hours, I grasp the threads of this tapestry, where love’s earliest whispers weave a narrative of chance encounters and tender moments, a delicate dance of memory and longing.”

‘New Work: Samson Young’ runs from December 21, 2024 – June 22, 2025 at SFMOMA.