April 18, 2023 - TMU University

CYBERNETIC 3.0 represents the final installment of the CYBERNETICS: projection installation series, which delves into the relationship between human-computer interaction (HCI) through the lens of Artificial Intelligence art (AI). 

The installation, a projection mapping on inflatable latex, seeks to examine systemic racism in a avante-garde manner. Upon entering the dark room of CYBERNETIC 3.0, the viewer is greeted by three large spheres stacked on top of each other, each featuring a morphing AI-generated portrait video of a face. The portrait videos are projected onto the inflatable surfaces of the spheres. 

Over the course of a year, I experimented with various prompts to generate AI art, and eventually mustered the courage to prompt the machine to create a "Portrait of an African Person." To my surprise, all of the resulting images resembled mugshots. This revelation fascinated me, as it demonstrated that even an impartial, unfiltered generative machine could clearly showcase systemic racism. Machine learning bias and racism often arise from AI systems being trained on data that harbors implicit racial bias. This can be traced back to those who constructed the machine learning networks and the references they chose to highlight, influenced by their subconscious racial bias. As a result, I became interested in studying the capitalist colonial system, which inherently discriminates against minorities, by examining the history and current production process of Artificial Intelligence. I strongly believe that the way technology is used can have a profound impact on the distribution of power and authority in society, and this serves as the basis for my thesis research. CYBERNETIC 3.0 hopes to shed light on systemic racism and its effect on marginalized communities by providing research data of AI bias for those communities.