Designer | Researcher
Project
Art Scam
Exhibition Game | Speculative Design | Design for Future
Personal Project
(2023. London)
"Art Scam" is an open-ended interactive event curated. It aims to reflect on the relationship between creators, works and copyright based on the impact of AI creation on modern art production. AI creation tools use big data to collect "raw materials" which are then processed into new works. Users create new works through words and choices. Thus, the era of "everyone creates, everyone is an artist" seems to have arrived, but is this an era of artistic freedom and creative accessibility, or is it an invisible scam? Who is really controlling your work?
Background of the world: Ai creation for ordinary people, just like the magic pen in the "Magic Pen Ma Liang" became an artist, the magic pen is no longer exclusive to those who learnt to practise art the hard way, everyone has a magic pen, everyone is an artist in the world, how will art develop? We have ushered in an era of creative equality, creative freedom and no threshold for artistic creation. People are encouraged to create freely with their magic pens. In this world, as long as you have a divine pen, you can create.
The social motto of our near-future world is "Equalisation of artistic creation, freedom", "Creative freedom, artistic freedom".
This is a wonderful welfare society with no threshold for creation.
Against this background, the project designs a future interactive exhibition based on the classical Chinese legend "The Magic Brush of Ma Liang" - an art scam under the guise of a qualification exam.
In the exhibition, the staff guides the audience who wants to get the artist's qualification certificate to choose different creative techniques to create on the spot - AI and various means of free creation, and after the creation is completed, the audience is guided to draw lottery tickets to decide whether they pass or not. When the results are available, those who get a pass get a certificate, while those who fail are directed to put their work in a delicate "bin", which is then immediately recycled by the staff and posted in the new products section (think who controls the art market?).
After a 1-3mins break, the staff will come and take back the pass (i.e. the audience who chose AI) and tell him that you are not the real creator, and the loser "you are the real creator".
Throughout the process, there is a lot of switching back and forth between double identities and double deceptions, as well as a lot of metaphorical clues and connections to the real world designed to stimulate the player's thinking in the process.
（ Worldview booklet- distributed to the audience after the end )
For example, from the NPC analysis, it is obvious that Al Liang Ma001 is the first one to get the qualification certificate, so she is the No.1, while the real Liang Ma loses her name and becomes the "Other"; secondly, all the endings are predetermined, at the beginning of the selection of the channel, because the numbering is controlled ahead of time, you are not given the chance to choose Al, you will surely get a ticket. If you choose Al, you will definitely get a pass card, and if you choose to create freely, you can only fail. Finally, after the contestants in the AI channel qualify for the certificates, they're happy, but five minutes later, they'll know it's a scam. Instead, the player will also have a moment of emotional reversal in the "other" channel, and the small design is that the player will throw the real artwork into the beautiful bin after the "other" channel (the design of the bin is also a scam), and the staff will steal it. In fact, it's a metaphor for the copyright issues and art production lines behind ai drawing.
The project aims to guide the public to see the potential crisis for art development, creators and works in the trend of Ai raw drawings through a live game experience.