Recollection

reCollection uses interactive AI to assemble and display synthetic collective memories based on language input. The AI system learns from Alzheimer patients’ visual and descriptive memories and then imagines new memories by interpreting real-time narratives from participants in the installation. It offers an artistic approach and future prototype for cultural heritage reproduction and re-imagination and explores the tensions in the co-relations between visual representations, language, and narratives.

In our exploration of AI, biodata, and reconnection, we have paired ReCollection, an interactive AI art installation that blurs the boundaries between remembrance and imagination and Entanglement, where AI interprets forests into dreams and hallucinations.

ReCollection (2023) is an interactive AI art installation that assembles synthetic collective memories based on language input, blurring the boundaries between remembrance and imagination through AI system design and interactive experimental visualization. We developed our AI system by fine-tuning a pre-trained, transformer-based AI model to learn the documentaries of Alzheimer patients’ visual memories and their descriptions. The system imagines new memories by interpreting real-time narratives from participants in the installation. It offers an artistic approach and future prototype for cultural heritage reproduction and re-imagination and explores the tensions in the co-relations between visual representations, language, and narratives. Special thanks to our AI Technical Director Sam Green, Semiotic Labs

Artist Bio
Weidi Zhang: Weidi Zhang is a Los Angeles and Phoenix-based new media artist/designer and an assistant professor of immersive experience design at Arizona State University (US). Her interdisciplinary art and design research investigates A Speculative Assemblage at the intersection of immersive media design, experimental data visualization, and interactive AI art. Her works are featured in international awards, such as Red Dot Design Award, Best In Show Awards in SIGGRAPH, Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica, Juried Selection in Japan Media Arts Festival, Lumen Prize shortlists, and others. Her works have been exhibited at international venues such as ISEA, Times Art Museum, Society For Arts and Technology [SAT], SwissNex Galler, Zeiss-Planetarium Berlin, and others. She holds her Ph.D. degree in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Website: http://www.zhangweidi.com

Rodger(Jieliang) Luo:  Rodger (Jieliang) Luo is a Principal AI Research Scientist at the Autodesk AI Lab in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara, where he explored the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and creativity. His current research focus is understanding how to learn complex behaviors with imitation and reinforcement learning and applying the insights for construction automation and architecture design. His work has been presented at SIGGRAPH, ICCV, ICRA, CoRL, IROS, ECCV, ICLR, and others.

STORYTELLING + TECHnology

More Projects

We Are Entanglement is inspired by the motif of the forest and its underground fungal network. The artist team Artificial Nature invites visitors into this multi-sensory, multi-dimensional immersive and interactive environment where we humans, visible and invisible forests, and generative AI are continuously intertwined with each other.

reCollection uses interactive AI to assemble and display synthetic collective memories based on language input. The AI system learns from Alzheimer patients’ visual and descriptive memories and then imagines new memories by interpreting real-time narratives from participants in the installation. It offers an artistic approach and future prototype for cultural heritage reproduction and re-imagination and explores the tensions in the co-relations between visual representations, language, and narratives.

SinkInSync presents the design and prototype of a cross-person EEG neurofeedback experience. This generative gamified platform uses one user’s brainwave data to procedurally render 3D scenes and passively displays visual cues that are synchronized with the real-time brainwave frequency to another user. With the platform, we aim to enhance cognitive and emotional social connectedness during remote interactions via external cues for brainwave synchronization between pairs of individuals and through pair-based gamification.

Meneath, a unique installation experience created for SIGNALS, based on Métis creator Terril Calder’s installation Meneath: The Mirrors of Ethics, winner of the New Voices Award at New York’s Tribeca Festival. Meneath charts the challenging journey of a precocious Métis Baby Girl as she contemplates her path to Hell. Using interfering screens in an object reminiscent of a puppet theatre, this stop-motion installation unearths hidden Indigenous values and illuminates the bias of our colonial systems.

This body of work was created by re-imagining materials from the North as an embodiment of human characteristics and walk cycles within a 3D environment to bring out their spirit.

This digital work represents the next generation of elders in spirit form within the woods as they safely assist those who have passed into the afterlife.

This VR / 3D animated short film presents multiple overlapping timelines of Denendeh; the giant animals that roamed the North of the past, the present landscape, and the future infused with technology and habitable orbiting stations for our population as the world rebuilds itself.

The Interactive Polyphonic Garden is an interactive, ambisonic piece that intimately explores our relationship with the living, breathing and animate world. Using tools of biosonification and a curated garden of Indigenous plants, Ruby Singh and Cease Wyss raise songs and melodies from flora and fungi, transforming bioelectricity into midi data to inform pitch and rhythm.

Experience an exclusive sneak peak installation where you can play the upcoming Homeworld 3 months before its release. Homeworld 3’s campaign is set in a galaxy that has enjoyed an age of abundance thanks to the Hyperspace Gate Network, with the cycles of peace and war having come and gone. The gates themselves are now catastrophically failing and Karan, who has passed into myth and religious idolatry, is the key to the mystery threatening the entire galaxy’s future.

The interactive installation premiere of Fae Farm, where you create your own cozy home in the enchanted world of Azoria. Craft, cultivate, and decorate to grow your shared homestead—and use spells to explore the enchanted island of Azoria! You’ll forge new bonds with residents, discover fae magic, and trek across mysterious realms. And as the seasons change, you’ll use all you've learned and discovered together to restore the world around you.

A narrative-based game featuring characters voiced by local asian-canadian actors. 1000xRESIST is an exploratory experience of walking through locations that traverse diverse and multiple timelines.

Echoes of Chinatown: A Walk with Goong Goong is a two-part 180-degree video projection and AR installation exploring the history of Vancouver's Chinatown through the use of memory. The video projection is an animated 4-minute film, A Walk with Goong Goong, about a WWII veteran revisiting Chinatown with his granddaughter and reliving bittersweet memories. As a counterpart, the AR installation, A Parade to Remember, features an AR interactive projection of the V-DAY parade celebrating the end of WWII against a physical backdrop of the Wing Sang building. Through both pieces, we hope to acknowledge the resilience and efforts that our Chinese-Canadian ancestors have paved the way for Chinese-Canadians today.

Indigenous storytellers from across Turtle Island attended the first ever in the world Indigenous video production training program. Using Unreal Engine, the program that is transforming the media industry (see Mandolorian, Star Trek: Strange New Words), they created short films that tell stories never seen before. Celebrate these artists as they apply tech innovation to stories that tell our many histories, lived lives and metaphysical experiences.

AR Projects Commissioned from artists from xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), & Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

Do you have any projects in development that you might want to showcase October 1 - 7 at the Signals Beta Lounge? It’s a chance to test something not public ready in a controlled environment with audience. We’re also using it as a meeting spot of convergence for creative technologists and a way for you to invite people that you may want to meet with or have a coffee with.

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A unique interactive exhibition, Signals celebrates the creative power, playfulness, and storytelling potential of new technologies.

Two Days

$ 60
  • Full Two Days Access
  • Full Access Workshops
  • Full Access Lectures
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