Concept

In this digital age when visuals are so easily created by generative models, the most important component of an art piece becomes the concept, not the actual visual itself. I want my art to be provocative pieces that invoke conversation rather than being aesthetic pieces that are valued just for their visual composition. My piece Concept explores this idea through three art pieces composed of a series of changing visuals accompanied by a static museum-style label that describes my exact concept.

To start, I created three labels that describe the artistic concepts I wanted to convey in each piece.







Some notable things about these labels: I am still grappeling with the role of artificial intelligence in generative art, especially when it plays a large part in creating visuals. Is it a collaborator, a muse, or just a tool like Photoshop? In these labels, I opted to list it as a possible source of assistance in a way that a human artist's name would be shown on the label.

Another aspect of these labels is my nationality. When looking at references of museum labels online, they often list the nationality of the artist, which is valuable in providing background information on the circumstances surrounding the artist's process. In this case, I opted to list both Japan, my birthplace and current citizenship-holding country, and America, where I grew up and am currently in the process of getting a citizenship.

Each of these labels were accompanied by a flatscreen TV showing a video of still images slowly morphing into each other. With around 40 images for each label, and with the video looping indefinitely, there was an endless stream of visuals that could be paired with the label at any given time. These visuals were created via DALL-E using simple prompts that related to the concepts, such as "Japanese mythology in oil painting style." Although I wanted each image to have the strength to be a vessel for my concept, I was not particularly picky on the quality of the art, since the central idea for this project is that the concept, not the visuals is the core of an art piece.


Examples of visuals for Extranet

Examples of visuals for Pixel Religion

Examples of visuals for Room as Fashion

By having a rotating set of visuals rather than one piece that accompanies the label, I reinforce the idea that the intention of the artist is the backbone of a strong artwork. Although artificial intelligence is remarkably good at generating visuals, they lack the fourth dimension of a strong concept that inserts an inherent human interest in its form. Although conceptual art often focuses on minimal visuals, this piece takes the opposite route, overloading the viewer with generated art and essentially creating inflation due to the sheer overabundance. In this way, the label is the oasis that provides a meaningful start of conversation regardless of the visual that is flashing on the screen.