YEH Ting-Hao：Unconscious Machine

Exhibition｜2024.10.05-2024.12.22
Opening｜2024.10.05 (Sat.) 14:00 
Venue｜Multiple Screens Area, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

“ChatGPT is like a blurry JPEG image on the internet.” — Ted Chiang (2023)

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT or text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion compress vast amounts of raw data during training, resulting in highly versatile models. Once trained, users provide prompts to refine results, reduce noise, and approximate reality, ultimately generating outputs that align closely with their imagination.

We might consider the functioning of these models as a form of collective unconsciousness among machines. When users interact with these models, the resulting AI hallucinations emerge from this subconscious realm. These hallucinations are not expressions of machine consciousness but rather approximations generated through comparing, denoising, and processing within the model based on the prompts. Whether these models can produce outputs close to reality or not, they eventually transcend reality, inching closer to the manifestations within human consciousness.

Debating the authenticity of these outcomes becomes irrelevant, as calibrated hallucinations are “artificial truths.”

This work leverages machine generation and recognition, engaging in a dialectical and iterative process between images and prompts in an attempt to depict a subconscious of the machine.

YEH Ting-Hao is a new media artist and lecturer who works in the field of creative coding, immersive visuals, experimental sound and live performance. His works mostly focus on the relationship of sound and visual, heading to integrate prefabricated and instantaneous events, starting from glitch aesthetics, and attempting to find parodies and dialectics belonging to the new media age. In addition to his solo works, he also participates in dance and theater productions. He has formed the Audio-Visual duo HH with YAO Chung-Han. He is currently the head of the experimental audio-visual promotion group “Fluid Noise”, selected as Artist-in-Residence at National Taichung Theater 2023-24, and teaches in the Department of Communications Design of Shih Chien University.