Machine Love

Our first foray into the gigaplex that is Tokyo was for the Mori Art Museum located on the 53rd floor of the Mori building in the Roppongi neighborhood. 

We realized today that in Tokyo, we had to be a little more clever with Google maps. Or maybe Google maps needs to get more clever. Tokyo is vertical. The map might show you standing right on top of your destination but it’s not there. It might be two levels down in the basement or on the 53rd floor.

The special exhibition, MACHINE LOVE, awaited. Subtitled Video game, AI and Contemporary Art. 

Does generative AI have the capacity to surpass human creativity? The curators theorize that it does. But more to the point, what happens when “machines” and humans work together in collaborative creativity pushing the limits of both human and technological abilities.

As I enter the exhibit, there are two walls contains a glossary of terms we might want to know in order to understand explanations throughout the works.

There is the artist Beeple whose work Human One represents the first human born in the metaverse. “The mysterious traveler walking tirelessly through a series of constantly shifting digital landscapes is a metaphor for the increasingly digitized condition of human existence”.

I was captivated Lu Yang, who has been creating DOKU which takes its inspiration from the Mahayana Buddhist phrase “Dokusho Dokushi” (we are born alone, and we die alone). Yang uses an avatar much resembling himself to travel through what he perceives to be different dimensions of the Buddhist spiritual world offering his perspective on life and death.

Capturing screenshots of video doesn’t do justice but it’s all I’ve got.

The museum cafe was just the place to sit and cogitate on what we’d just seen with a 53rd floor view as our backdrop.