Learning to See (2017). Memo Akten “We must learn to see things as they are, not as we are.”“我们必须学会看待事物的本来面目，而不是我们的本来面目。” – Memo Akten Perception is the visual and sensory interpretation of the world around us. The way we see the world is unique to our experiences and environment. For years, humans have been working with machines to emulate humans and their emotions for the purposes of automation, productivity, and the research of the human psyche. Through artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms, machines are now able to mimic humans. Being modeled after humans, machines can show the complex state of human perception and the impact of our cognitive functions on the way we express ourselves. Artist Memo Akten takes this concept of perception to help us realize the disparities that arise in our view of the world. The artist’s union of art and technology not only explore the collaboration of humans and machine but also show us a bigger picture of the implications of AI development. 感知是我们对周围世界的视觉和感官解释。我们看待世界的方式由各人的经验和所处环境而异。多年来，人类一直在使用机器来模仿人类及其情绪，以实现自动化、提高产量以及人类心理研究。通过人工智能和深度学习算法，机器现在能够模仿人类。以人类为模型，机器可以显示人类感知的复杂状态以及我们的认知功能对如何表达自己的方式的影响。艺术家 Memo Akten 采用这种感知概念来帮助我们认识对世界的看法所出现的差异。这位艺术家将艺术与技术结合起来，不仅探索了人与机器的协作，还向我们展示了人工智能发展的更大意义。 About the artist关于艺术家 Memo Akten is an award-winning artist based in London. researcher and philomath whose award-winning projects use AI to reflect ourselves and how we make sense of the world. The artist takes inspiration from a wide variety of sciences and is currently working towards a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence with a focus on Machine Learning. He has exhibited works globally in places such as the Grand Palais in Paris, the Royal Opera House in London, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in Russia, Holon Museum in Tel Aviv, the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, and the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in Portugal. He has received prizes such as the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in 2013, the Japan Media Arts award in 2015, and more. Akten is now doing his artist residency at the Royal Northern College of Music Centre for PRiSM (Practice & Research in Science & Music) in Manchester. Memo Akten 是一位屡获殊荣的伦敦艺术家。同时也是一位研究员和哲学家，其获奖项目使用人工智能来反映我们自己以及我们如何理解世界。他从各种科学中汲取灵感，目前正在攻读人工智能的博士学位，重点是机器学习。他的作品在全球范围内展出，如巴黎大皇宫、伦敦皇家歌剧院、俄罗斯莫斯科现代艺术博物馆、特拉维夫霍隆博物馆、阿姆斯特丹 EYE 电影学院和葡萄牙里斯本建筑三年展。他还获得了2013 年 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica 奖、2015 年日本媒体艺术奖等奖项。Akten 现在正在曼彻斯特的皇家北方音乐学院 PRiSM（科学与音乐实践与研究）中心学习创作。 “My biggest inspiration is trying to understand the world around me. The fundamental questions that drive me are the same questions that have been asked for thousands of years. What is the nature of the universe? What is the nature of life? What is the nature of the mind? Drawing from fields such as physics, biology, abiogenesis, evolution, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, and theology, I study the hidden processes that shape our world, and develop systems that abstract behavior hoping to create unfamiliar familiarities and encourage new perceptions.” “我最大的灵感是试图了解我周围的世界。驱动我的问题与几千年来一直被问到的问题相同。宇宙的本质是什么？生命的本质是什么？心灵的本质是什么？我从物理学、生物学、生物起源、进化论、神经科学、心理学、哲学、社会学、人类学、历史和神学等领域汲取灵感，研究塑造我们世界的隐藏过程，并开发抽象行为的系统，希望创造不熟悉的熟悉感以及鼓励新的看法。” Understanding our current reality through machines通过机器了解我们当前的现实Engineered Arts. Youtube. Today, robots are able to express emotions to a certain extent with robots such as Ameca and Sophia taking on a human-like persona. It is a surreal yet uneasy realization that humans must consider when thinking of the future. The once dystopian worlds of movies like Bladerunner, I-Robot, and Minority Report could be closer realities than we think. At the same time, we wonder about the differences in understanding human emotions and expressing them from the perspective of both humans and machines. 今天，机器人能够在一定程度上表达情感，而 Ameca 和 Sophia 等机器人则已经开始逼真于人类。这是人类在思考未来时必须考虑的超现实但令人不安的事实。《银翼杀手》 （Bladerunner）、《我，机器人》（I-Robot ）和 《少数派报告》（Minority Report ） 等曾经的反乌托邦电影世界可能比我们想象的更接近现实。同时，我们想知道从人类和机器的角度来理解人类情感并表达它们的差异。 Learning to See (2021). Memo Akten Memo Akten’s “Deep Meditations” is multi-disciplinary work that explores how machines interpret human concepts such as love, life, theology, nature, and more. Akten does so by training the algorithm to associate images that relate to concepts of human life and program it to imagine newly generated images as part of its interpretation. This experiment creates a fresh visual journal that records the imagination of machines. The resulting imagery is a mix of objects, concepts, and environments in unprecedented arrangements that build a narrative of the inner thinkings of the machine based on human experiences. The significant part of this work does not lie within the machine itself but rather the algorithm that controls the outcomes. Memo Akten 的“Deep Meditations”是跨领域的作品，探索机器如何解释人类概念，如爱情、生活、神学、自然等。Akten 通过训练算法与人类生活概念相关的图像关联起来，并对其进行编程，以新生成的图像作为呈现的一部分。这个实验创造了一个新的视觉日记，记录了机器的想象力。由此产生的图像是混合了主体、概念和环境，它们以前所未有的排列方式构建了基于人类经验的机器内部思维的叙述。这个作品的重要部分不在于机器本身，而在于控制结果的算法。 Deep Mediations (2019). Memo Akten Memo Akten’s reasoning for creating this work is not only to observe the perspectives and relationship of humans and machines but also to raise awareness about the chaotic nature of how we shape our beliefs and to question it. Having seen the rise of ISIS, conflicts within Turkey, Brexit, Trump, and the way people begin to believe in certain things, he hopes that “Deep Mediations” can help humans to see the flaw of human perception. Our biases, and the failure to regard an instance from the viewpoints of others as well as the way we come to our conclusions surrounding the world is what the artist believes led us to our current social and political environments. Just like the machine, we are fed to see information in certain ways and our surrounding influences shape the outcome of those interpretations beyond facts. Akten creates commentary for more than creative matters through this work and hopes that the use of technology may create a better world. Memo Akten 创作这部作品的原因不仅是为了观察人与机器的视角和关系，同时是为了让人们对我们如何塑造信仰的混乱本质进行认识并质疑它。看到 ISIS 的崛起、土耳其内部的冲突、英国脱欧、特朗普以及人们开始相信某些事情的方式，他希望“Deep Meditations”这个作品可以帮助人类看到人类感知的缺陷。我们存在偏见，不能从他人的角度看待一个现象，并且总是由周围所处的环境得出结论，这些是艺术家认为我们是如何造成当前的社会和政治环境的原因。就像机器一样，我们被以某种方式投喂信息，而周围的影响塑造了我们如何理解这些信息，而不是对事实的了解。Akten通过这个作品展现出了一种不局限于艺术的讨论，他希望技术的使用可以创造一个更美好的世界。 “My duty is to inform people that this genesis is happening – it’s alive and in motion right now – and we should be talking about it and asking the right questions…It’s imperative that we all do that to have hope in shaping the future.” “我的职责是告诉人们这个过程正在发生——它现在还活跃着并且在做出改变——我们应该谈论它并提出正确的问题……我们这样做迫在眉睫，只有这样才能对塑造未来抱有希望。” Learning to See学会看见Learning to See (2017). Memo Akten The human mind is a complex and powerful machine in itself. While it relies on sensory data to create our world not all of it may be real. Our brains are engineered in a way that allows us to fill in missing information in the blink of an eye. Many people may have experienced the viral white-gold or blue-black dress illusion where the mind “fills in” missing visual input based on its internal memory. Take this optical illusion below for example. 人脑本身就是一台复杂而强大的机器。虽然它依靠感官数据来创造我们的世界，但并非所有这些都是真实的。我们大脑的工作方式使我们能够在眨眼之间填补缺失的信息。许多人可能经历过网络病毒式的白金还是蓝黑色裙子的错觉，在这种错觉中，大脑会根据其内部记忆“填补”缺失的视觉输入。以下面的这种视错觉为例， When we see this image, we see a triangle, however in reality it is not. Our brain is trained to see the world through patterns, geometric structures, objects, and logic. This concept is similar to what Memo Akten shows through his works. The concept of bias defines the beliefs of the people around us. “Learning to See” is the extension of “Deep Mediations” that explores these themes. 当我们看到这个图像时，我们看到的是一个三角形，但实际上它不是。我们的大脑被训练通过图案、几何结构、对象和逻辑来看待世界。这个概念类似于Memo Atkens 通过他的作品所展示的。偏见的概念定义了我们周围人的观念。“Learning to See”这个系列在“Deep Mediations”之外对探索这些主题进一步展开延伸。 Learning to See (2017). Memo Akten “Learning to See” is Akten’s ongoing series of works that has an artificial neural network that interprets the world it seems from the context of its memory and experiences. Using machine learning algorithms, the artist makes viewers self-reflect on their state and how they understand the world around them. Here, the inner mind is not an exact copy of the world but our reconstruction of it. Instead of focusing on the external representation, it focuses more on the internal visualization in the same way we dream and imagine. This deep exploration of bias and social polarization is what makes Akten’s art valuable. It goes beyond the magnificent visual imagery and technical prowess by showing the inventive nature of the mind shown through the help of machines. 《学会看见》（Learning to See）是 Akten 正在进行的一系列作品，它有一个人工神经网络，它从记忆和经验的背景中解释它所看到的世界。通过使用机器学习算法，艺术家让观众自我反思他们的状态以及他们如何理解周围的世界。在这里，内心不是世界的精确副本，而是我们对世界的重建。它不像我们梦想和想象的那样专注于外部表现，而是更多地关注内心的可视化。这种对偏见和社会两极分化的深入探索使阿克滕的艺术变得有价值。它超越了宏伟的视觉图像和技术实力，通过机器的帮助展示了思维的创造性本质。 Deep Mediations (2019). Memo Akten Issues such as climate change and Brexit are some examples Akten comments on indirectly through his work. The construction of bias and the way many people cement their beliefs in irrational ways is something that we must stop and think about for making better decisions for the future. These types of phenomena show that oftentimes people seek out information that aligns more with affirming their biases and that humans tend to subconsciously live in an illusion of perceiving the world objectively. The message is that our view of the world is seen as reality rather than biased and that another interpretation that is not ours is less trustworthy or incorrect. These assumptions, of course, are not intentional but simply the reality that we build within our heads subconsciously. 气候变化和英国脱欧等问题是Akten通过他的作品间接表达的一些例子。偏见的构建以及许多人以非理性方式巩固他们信念的方式是我们必须停下来思考的事情，以便为未来做出更好的决策。这些类型的现象表明，人们通常会寻找更符合肯定他们的偏见的信息，并且人类倾向于下意识地生活在客观感知世界的幻觉中。信息是我们对世界的看法，它被视为现实而不是偏见，但是另一种不属于我们的解释就显得不那么正确和值得信赖了，当然，这些假设不是故意的，而只是我们下意识地在脑海中建立的现实。 Deep Mediations (2019). Memo Akten At the end of the day, Memo Akten hopes that his works can help us to self-reflect and identify the restraints of human perception while also developing technology that can be used in more positive ways for the benefit of humans. For him, AI is his main tool for seeing the world in a different light and showcasing the intricacies of our relationship with ourself psychology and our perception of reality. 归根结底，Memo Akten 希望他的作品能够帮助我们自我反省，识别人类感知的限制，同时开发可以更积极地用于造福人类的技术。对他来说，人工智能是他以不同的眼光看待世界并展示我们与自己的心理和我们对现实感知的复杂关系的主要工具。 “…What’s happening in 2018 is not disconnected from what happened 100 or 10,000 years ago. When Galileo took a lens and made a telescope to look at the stars, he literally allowed us to look at the world in a whole new light. We cannot be the same after that. Well, that would have worked better if the Church hadn’t stepped in. If we do not use technology to see things differently, we are wasting it.” “……2018 年发生的事情与一百或一万年前发生的事情并没有脱节。当伽利略用镜头制造望远镜来观测星体时，他确实让我们以全新的眼光看待世界。在那之后我们不再一样了。好吧，如果教会没有介入，那会更好。如果我们不使用技术以不同的方式看待事物，我们就是在浪费它。” *all images and artworks belong to the artist & his representing galleries respectively*所有图像和艺术品分别属于艺术家及其代表画廊 For more information on the artist, please click here点击此处查看艺术家的更多信息 Translation 翻译 Rona Xia FOR MORE RELATED CONTENT
