Gallery Chosun presents the exhibition FMK's Q to assess the impact of digital technologies such as blockchain and AI on art, which has recently gained much attention. The exhibition is the first in a series of irregularly planned events, and will feature Chinese new media artist Axl Le.
Governments around the world, worried about both the COVID crisis and economic crisis, implemented quantitative easing policies, and while logistics crisis caused by China's blockade policy caused turmoil, bubbles formed in the financial markets. As a result, cryptocurrency prices surged, and so did the prices of NFT art, which is traded using cryptocurrencies. Along with social distancing policies, many people have become accustomed to online meetings, and various media have begun talking about the metaverse. Now that the COVID crisis has abated, inflation and rising interest rates have arrived, and people are returning to the streets. The time when everyone was talking about new technologies seems to have passed, and it feels like we have returned to the pre-COVID era.
No, nothing can be exactly the same as before after such a significant event in history. Although the prices of cryptocurrencies and NFT art have declined along with the drop in cryptocurrency prices, Pace Gallery is operating its own NFT platform, and Gagosian Gallery, which was previously skeptical of NFTs, recently issued a Murakami Takashi NFT. Art Basel and Frieze have been steadily operating online viewing rooms since the COVID crisis, and Christie's and Sotheby's have launched and operated their own NFT platforms. Moreover, there has been a lot of interest in AI technology, represented by ChatGPT, and artworks created using AI technology. Many artists are already using image-generating AI to create their works, and MoMA recently exhibited Refik Anadol's artwork created using AI technology, attracting a lot of attention and interest.
However, the changes in art resulting from these new technologies seem somewhat ambiguous. There seem to be many tasks that the products of new technologies need to solve, and the customs of enjoying art have not changed significantly. The world known as 'virtual' is shrouded in issues such as limited energy and resource mining, as well as labor. The source of the data that AI learns from and the copyright issues of its results are also contentious issues. There are still questions about the value of NFTs, and the criteria for judging works created by machines rather than humans are also ambiguous. Will all these problems and doubts be resolved by the time we reach the digital native generation? Will the perspective of enjoying art remain unchanged despite this? Will art be simply divided into two categories, 'classical modern art' and 'digital modern art'? Or why did we ever consider art to have certain values in the first place?
Axl Le showcases his new work, The First Metahuman, along with his previous works at Gallery Hyundai's exhibition FMK's Q1_Axl Le. Axl Le's concept of 'Metahuman' refers to digital copies of real humans or humans that exist solely in the digital realm. Metahumans amplify human desires for physical perfection and beauty in the digital space to an almost ethereal degree. As an example, photo editing apps' capabilities have become increasingly sophisticated and natural, allowing for the correction of skin tone, facial features, body proportions, and even background distortion, and tone correction. People upload edited images of themselves on social media, and their online personas live in a different space than their real selves.
Axl Le goes further and asks whether the standards set by the digital realm can affect the real world and people. In his previous work, The Patient, which deals with contemporary labor, Axl Le implies the reversal of roles between computers and humans, where computers become the subject and humans become the object. We already suffer from the relative poverty caused by the discrepancy between other people's brightest moments in social media and our dark reality.
The reversal between the digital space and the real world raises many questions. Are we merely living with additional identities in the same way we live with various social identities? Or are we simply suffering from the discrepancy and gap between online and offline? Are we a 'loser' in reality and a 'winner' in this digital realm? Or are there no gaps between various offline identities? Furthermore, if the digital space has such a significant impact, is it even possible to distinguish between the digital and real worlds?
Gallery Hyundai's exhibition FMK's Q1_Axl Le also showcases AI-generated images by Axl Le. Regarding the value of AI-generated art and art created through image-generating AI, ChatGPT states, 'AI-generated art is also known as "AI Art" or "Generative Art." AI Art has a new style and form that differentiates it from traditional artwork, so it has unique characteristics. It also assists artists in creating their work.
The question of whether AI-generated images can be recognized as art is currently debated among the art industry and art critics. AI-generated images are created by reflecting the creativity and artistic expression of human creators, so recognizing such images as art is possible. However, the quality and artistic value of the resulting work may vary depending on the developer or algorithm of the image-generating AI. Therefore, whether images created through AI are recognized as art depends on various factors, such as the artwork's artistic quality, the message conveyed by the work, and the artist's intention.' Then how is 'artistic value' determined? There are many ways to critique AI art, such as in the context of the history of photography, post-medium discourse, and their relationship with art history. Let us pose a big question here.
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
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