Ziyao Lin
Ziyao Lin is an artist and PhD student at Loughborough University. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Digital Media Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and a master's degree in Digital Media from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Her creative endeavors span digital art, experimental video, and installations, focusing on themes such as the relationship between individuals and nature, technological ethics, and micro-politics. Ziyao's research papers and artistic creations have been published in academic journals like Leonardo by MIT Press and presented at conferences such as ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia. She has won the Share Prize at the Share Festival in Italy and has been nominated for awards, including the S+T+ARTS Award at the Ars Electronica Festival.
Learn more about Ziyao’s work:
Image: AI Diary. Video.
“This project, conceived and created over the first half of 2023, started with the concept of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) archive, which I then documented over a period of several months.
In the first part, the anonymous artist author presents her daily conversations, practices and life with ChatGPT as informative visual images. These fragmented recordings present the possibilities and potential problems of AI, a giant and complete intelligent system reflected through the lives and existence of distinct, insignificant individuals.
Another part of the work is a video essay, in which the AI speaks from their perspective about the archive, recounting its creation over the same period of time. It includes details of events from the AI's point of view, as well as the AI's flirtations with and comments on human behaviour.
This archive, which mixes memory and truth, blurring the boundaries between the private and the public, explores the hot topic of AI in 2023, how it is slowly entering the public eye and influencing action, throwing up the question of how humans will live with AI technology in the future.”
Image: Pathological Landscapes. Video, installation.
“Medical institutions are filled with dense crowds, and the air is permeated with a fearful uncertainty. When patients face long waits and cold responses, can general artificial intelligence understand "care" better than humans?
"Pathological Landscape" is an art project that explores medical care through video and installation. The visuals include an AI-assisted data visualization of diagnostic report information. The video segment features a series of dialogues between humans and machines, demonstrating the language model’s ability to analyze medical conditions and provide comfort and guidance to patients. Time, the machine, and the human each play significant roles in the narrative.
The work navigates between rationality and irrationality, with the relationship between the human and AI prompting reflections on human relationships. This project aims to explore the potential and limitations of general AI as an individual aid in the medical field, while also embedding a vision and wish of integrating more humanized care into the medical process.”
Image: The Paradox of Abandon. Video.
“The artist carries a flag, walking through different locations. The flag, a symbol traditionally associated with collective identity and sovereign control, gains a contradictory meaning with the printed word “ABANDON” in red. Since 1604, the word "ABANDON" has often occupied the first position in most English vocabulary books, seemingly foreshadowing the inevitable psychological tug-of-war between giving up and persevering when learning a new language. The large red letters symbolize the intense frustration experienced by non-native English speakers when confronted with language barriers, while the small blue handwritten text represents repetition and persistence. As English has become the global lingua franca, learning English is no longer merely about acquiring a communication tool but has become an essential means of attaining power in the context of globalization. The work uses the metaphor of "the dragon slayer eventually becoming the dragon" to explore the complexities of language and power.”