Purpose
(Non-)Human is a series of art installations intended to explore the realm of the half-human, half-object, responding to the question of "what is human, what is not human, and what lies between the two" by creating humans in non-human forms. The work's initial installation is a bedsheet that writhes and bends in the form of its owner, as if the owner had gotten up and gone out.
Main capabilities
The project attempts to evoke hidden humanity within objects and to imagine a speculative world in which humans exist in non-human forms. It is based on research in three areas: discoveries in physics and cosmology about the origins of life and humans; philosophical concepts about the relationship between consciousness and the universe as a whole; and related religious roots. Technically, the installation uses Arduino, cameras, RealSense, PoseNet, Node.js, a custom GAN, MongoDB, a custom bed frame, stepper motors, and a bedsheet. By training a custom GAN and using more than 300 hours of sleep recordings, combined with motion tracking, a dataset is generated to drive the bedsheet's movement, ultimately allowing the bedsheet to produce movement over time, a movement that originates from humans but transcends humans.
How to use
As an art installation, (Non-)Human is presented in exhibition form and is not a tool for users' daily operation. Its exhibition venues include: October 2021 Némo Digital Art Biennial, August 2021 Beijing Times Art Museum, May 2021 Maxxi—National Museum of the 21st Century, December 2020 NeurIPS Creative Workshop, November 2020 Heavy Iridescent Issue 1 "Consciousness", July 2020 The SHIM / Masters Show. Related coverage has appeared in Neural Magazine, Axis Web Magazine, and ML × Art.
Applicable scenarios
It is suitable for art exhibitions, digital art biennials, museum displays, academic creative workshops, and other scenarios, and is aimed at audiences and researchers interested in topics such as AI art, human-machine relations, posthumanism, and the philosophy of consciousness.
Limitations
The currently available materials do not provide the project's open-source code, reproducible installation steps, commercial licensing, or pricing information. Its technical details (such as motion mapping, GAN training, and hardware assembly) are mainly presented as part of the artistic creation process, and no direct usage method or productized function for ordinary users is provided.
