CONTENTS
Lu Xiaobo:Let Wisdom Fly Freely — Art and Science for Innovation / 001
Anne Collins Goodyear: Inventing “Art and Technology”: On the Origins of Art’s Recent Intellectual Engagement with Science and Technology and Why it Matters Today / 031
Zhang Bo:Literature and Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence / 055
David Hanson:Why the Arts Are Key to the Future of Artificial Intelligence? / 065
Paul Priestman:The Translation of Art, Science and Engineering for Health / 083
Philippe Hoerle-Guggenheim:Augmented Intelligence, Blockchain Technology and Crypto Currency. Is the Art World Going all Digital? / 097
Cheng Jing:The Translation of Art, Science and Engineering for Health / 105
Song Jiqiang:Computational Intelligence Expands the Vision of Art / 119
Gerhard Ludger Pfanz:Artificial and Artistic Intelligence / 129
Naren Barfield:Whose 4th Industrial Revolution? Art, Design and Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence / 149
Yoichiro Kawaguchi: Universe, Life and Intelligence / 163
Huang Weidong: Topics on the Interaction between Science and Art / 173
Boris Debackere: Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence / 191
Paul Chapman: SimVis: Blending the Arts and Sciences / 201
Tim Yip: Invisible Spiritual DNA / 215
Victoria Vesna: We Are [Alien] Star Dust: Macro Micro AI and Life / 223
Christa Sommerer: Artistic Interfaces and Automated Creation Processes / 237
Refik Anadol: Space in the Mind of a Machine : Creating Art with Data and AI / 257
AFTERWORD / 273
FOREWORD
Science seeks truth; art seeks beauty, yet they both pursue eternity, excellence, and harmony in the most profound sense. They absorb inspirations from life; yet they transcend inspiration into perfection. As the Nobel Prize winner Tsung-Dao Lee once put it: art and science are the two sides of a coin, originating from the most sacred activities of mankind and pursuing profound, universal, and timeless values in life. Science is accurate abstraction of natural phenomena, trying to find truth while seeking perfection; while art, on the other hand, inspires people in a creative way, trying to find beauty while seeking perfection. Thus, the French writer Gustave Flaubert declared that, “art and science...the two broke up at the bottom of the tower and met at the top of the tower” to jointly depict the splendid civilization of mankind. To mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the National Museum of China and Tsinghua University jointly hold the 5th Art and Science International Exhibition, following the strategic cooperation framework agreement signed by the two parties in 2018. The event aims to reveal the inner relations between art and science through exhibitions of the advanced achievements, Chinese and international, in art and science. It also aims to foster creation and harmonious development in art and science.
Since the time when the modern truth-seeking science came about and entered the world of beauty-seeking art, artists have gone through centuries of relentless artistic exploration. When Renaissance artists presented perspective drawing, space on a flat surface took on a three-dimensional and real-life look; when anatomy was applied to art, human bodies in paintings expressed more vitality; with the newly acquired knowledge of the colors of light, Impressionist artists were the first to show a colorful world under the sun, adding brilliant colors to the work of art. Following the invention of photography, the 19th-century art was no longer pursuing simple reproduction of the external world; instead, it turned inward to express the inner world. With the application of the Internet, big data, and cloud computing, artificial intelligence signifies the beginning of a new era and heralds an epoch-making revolution in art. The 5th Art and Science International Exhibition centered around the theme of AS-Helix: The Integration of Art and Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, clearly demonstrating that mankind must face together the various aspects of artificial intelligence and explore human cognitive potentials, artistic paradigm amid technological innovations, and collaborative creation in technology and art.
Early in the beginning of the 20th century, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin had inspired profound thinking in the world of modern art, inviting artists to rethink seriously the value of original work of art in an age of machines, where replicates were made in large quantities. Following the new technologies of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC), complex technologies such as artificial intelligence, human-machine integration, 3D printing, and genetic engineering, among others, will be more widely integrated into people’s lives, extending people’s life expectancy and creating new ways to present artworks. Nonetheless, the resulting intellectual property rights and social ethics issues have become increasingly prominent. This exhibition invites people from different academic disciplines and research fields in art and science to participate in the in-depth study of how art and science can be deeply integrated and developed in an collaborative manner in the age of AI, and how and to what extent such profound integration can bring fundamental changes to the way we work and live.
In the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, our country has been through a great historical process from regaining dignity to becoming prosperous and to becoming strong. While it has made our life much easier, rapid progress in science and technology has also profoundly changed people’s moral values, way of thinking, behavior patterns, and the way we work and live, features that make up the core of a culture. Our culture and art have evolved with the progress in science and technology. The National Museum of China, as the nation’s most prestigious temple of history, culture, and art, not only bears the responsibility of preserving history, carrying on traditions, and foster cultures, but it must also look forward to the future, to new art forms, to diverse artistic expressions, to more fruitful results from integrating science and art, and showing a better future. I sincerely hope that this exhibition will further promote the in-depth exchanges between science and art and guide audiences to gain a deeper understanding of the wonder of beauty and truth seeking as generated by the integration of art and science and to feel the driving force of art and science behind the progress of human civilization.
Wang Chunfa
Director of the National Museum of China