Melting Suns on the Screen /
DE SARTHE Gallery /
Hong Kong /
Aug 31 – Sept 28, 2024 /

As a preamble to his exhibition Melting Suns on the Screen, Liao Jiaming set up The Arcana Intelligent (2023), an interactive installation meant to simulate interactions with a sacred digital entity. Participants visiting de Sarthe Gallery sat or knelt on a cushion placed on the gallery’s floor, looking up at a nude, seemingly genderless avatar. Its barrel chest and awkwardly outstretched arms gave it an inhuman quality. Behind it was a vast vista of urban towers – blocky, dense, unclear whether they were part of an idealised, futuristic cityscape or a place at the end of civilisation.

The avatar and participant spoke to one another, their brief interactions culminating in a question posed by the visitor, the bigger the better. Silicon and software cogitations would yield an oracular response in the form of a dynamically generated tarot card. Do this on the right day and someone, such as artist Amy Tong, was present to decipher the image and elucidate the meaning locked within.

The entire experience stirs up associations with scapulimancy – divination using animal shoulder blades, sometimes known as oracle bones – or augury via Delphic fumes, and directly connects with Liao’s presentation that emerged from his time in 2024’s edition of the de Sarthe Artist Residency.

Through his show, the artist explored what it would be like to worship at the altar of a technological god, faith rooted in submission to artificial intelligence. The gallery, then, was hallowed ground, and the objects Liao created during his residency were reliquaries, icons and structures meant to inspire devotional awe.

The most direct connection was Vanity of Vanities (2024), a new audiovisual arrangement that used data mined and generated by The Arcana Intelligent. Hologram fans display images offered by visitors to the avatar in exchange for cosmic guidance, while audio tracks recorded from earlier interactions with the entity are played, each voice scrambled to mask the speaker’s identity. Electrical cables tangle and sprawl in different directions, punching into the white walls.

On the other end of de Sarthe’s space, The Creator 2.0 (2024) was set up like a station of worship, with a draping silicone bodysuit mounted atop a card vending machine. Visitors inserted a token to receive an AI-generated image of a male body, printed on cardstock, inspired by topless mirror selfies taken by men and uploaded to their photo galleries on dating apps. Viewed in a literal sense, the engagement was like a slanted derivation of encountering religious sculptures within a church or temple, then leaving with a charm meant to ward away evil or remind the holder of their faith.

There was more, including motherboards fused with glass and tarot card imagery from The Intelligent Arcana, as well as stained glass made to reference pictures from the same AI-created deck. These digital illustrations were an accumulation of answers, generated in response to the big and small questions posed by visitors in the early days of the residency – during the nascence of Liao’s techno-church.

In this scenario, what does that make the artist? Although playing the role of prophet and founder, Liao was absent from the theological experience. The show, after all, was meant to be an “abandoned site of worship”, with even the name of the religion lost to time. Yet the digital messengers of the AI god persist, still present to spark fascination in the pious and curious.

Featured image: The Creator 2.0 by Liao Jiaming,  2024. 3D hologram projector fan, custom-made trading cards, card vending machine, aluminum alloy, stainless steel, silicone, glass, carpet, stanchions, curtains, 270 x 320 x 490 cm, 2024. ©Liao Jiaming. Courtesy DE SARTHE, Hong Kong.

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光天化日
德薩畫廊
香港
2024年8月31日至- 9月28日

互動裝置《萬試萬靈》（2023年）模擬與數碼聖體的互動，為廖家明於德薩畫廊的展覽「光天化日」揭開序幕。參觀者可以選擇坐或跪在地板的坐墊上，仰望看似無性別的裸體化身。它的胸肌發達，以奇怪的姿勢張開雙臂，展示了它非人類的特質。它身後有一片廣闊的城市高樓景觀，大廈方正而密集，可能是理想中的城市未來，也可能是文明的末日。

參觀者可以與化身交談，在參觀者提出問題後，簡短的互動就會告終，問題越大越好。然後，矽膠和軟件會進行思考，以不斷變化的塔羅牌產生預言般的回應。如果去對了日子，你可能會遇到藝術家唐嘉欣等在場解讀圖像，闡釋當中含意。

整個體驗會讓人想起甲骨占卜（使用動物的肩胛骨（亦稱甲骨）進行的占卜）和德爾菲煙霧占卜，與廖家明在2024年德薩藝術家駐留項目中的作品有直接的關係。

廖家明透過展覽，探索敬拜科技之神和服從人工智能信仰的模樣。於是畫廊就成為了神聖之地，而廖家明在駐留期間創作的作品就成了激發敬畏之心的聖物、聖像和神聖建築。

與《萬試萬靈》最直接相關的就是《虛空的虛空》（2024年），這件新的視聽作品使用了《萬試萬靈》所收集和產生的數據。全息風扇展示了參觀者為獲得宇宙指引而向化身提供的圖像，同時播放之前互動時的音軌。藝術家將說話者的聲線扭曲，掩蓋其身份。電線交織纏繞，向不同方向蔓延，刺穿白色的牆壁。

德薩畫廊另一端的空間放置了《創世者2.0》（2024年），作品被設置成一個禮拜場所，一件矽膠連身衣掛在卡片販賣機上。參觀者投入代幣後，會收到印有AI生成的男性身體圖像卡片，靈感來自在交友程式將對鏡自拍的上半身裸體照上傳到相片庫的男性。作品營造的互動含意直接，像在教堂或寺廟看到宗教雕塑後，帶著驅邪或提醒信仰的護身符離開的動作一樣。

展覽還有很多其他作品，包括裝上了玻璃和《萬試萬靈》塔羅牌圖像的主機板，以及參考同一套AI塔羅牌圖像創作的彩繪玻璃。這些數碼圖像是答案的累積，而這些答案就是於駐留計劃初期，亦是廖家明的科技教堂誕生之初，由參觀者所提出的大小問題的回應中產生。

在整個過程中，藝術家的角色是什麼？雖然廖家明扮演著先知和發起人的角色，但他卻沒有出現在整個神化過程中。畢竟，這個展覽旨在設想一個「被遺棄的敬拜場所」，甚至連宗教的名字也隨著時間的推移而流逝。不過，AI之神的數碼使者依然存在，繼續激發信徒和好奇者的興趣。