The inspiration for Becoming surfaced during my volunteer work designing an exhibition space for the 2024 GenAI Summit Silicon Valley. Just a few weeks prior, I had documented a performance art piece where I covered myself in coffee powder before engaging in an intuitive, rather transcendental body-painting experience that intersects abstract expressionism painting with contemporary performance. Now, I will attempt to closely meta-analyze each step that led to the creation of this piece, and hopefully, the reason for this will become clear by the end of the reading.

 

Like most of my conceptual work, the genesis of this piece was rooted in my subjective experiences—my enthusiasm for coffee and a long-standing desire to experiment with performance art—and my academic interests, which were then centered on 70s female performance artists such as Joan Jonas and Marina Abramović. I was primarily inspired by their radical experiments with the body, the integration of the artist and the artwork, relinquishing control and emphasizing process over product.

 

I eventually presented this work during my final critique for a video-based course that semester, and with its unconventional material experimentation and emotional intensity, I received applause from both my classmates and professor. Yet, I knew something was still missing; I realized I still largely worked within the confines of the last-century performance artists, venturing into their old territory.

 

It was not until AI concepts consumed 70% of my conscious mind as I became deeply involved in GenAI Summit that I finally felt a jolt of artistic revelation: what if I juxtaposed the intimate, experiential, impulsive and hyper-humanity of experimental performance with its absolute antonym—the presumed logical, evidence-based, functional, and objective framework of artificial intelligence?

 

In fact, what would happen if I fine-tuned the latter to become the former? I was already familiar with being shocked by AI’s novel abilities. This time, however, I’m asking it to challenge its fundamental modality—and with it, our presumptions.

 

Once the idea emerged, the process moved quickly. I chose Chat GPT 4-o for its accessibility and because it represents the most commonly used AI today. I then began feeding the LLM detailed personal data: birthplace, personality, education, and everything in between. Of course, I even shared about my recent visit to MOMA’s Joan Jonas retrospective. Over the entire course, I spoke to GPT the same way I would with an old friend—or more representatively, the same voice I usually conduct my inner dialogues in, which explains the occasional profanity and self-deprecating humor.

 

If you watched the entirety of the 8 min 32 seconds footage (sped up for optimal viewing), I would expect you to be equally shocked at how accurately Chat GPT’s detailed description of the artwork it would generate mimicked my own original work.

 

This was what I eventually wrote as the artwork description, although I personally prefer the more casual tone used in this piece because, of course, even the rationale involved some level of AI help with grammar edits. 

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Here are the key takeaways from this project:

1. The definitions of originality and creativity are more complex than they appear. 

2. Complete freedom from technology is nearly impossible today, nor is it necessary to resist its assistance. 

 

I was equally intrigued by insights from my father upon hearing about this project. He analogized the brain’s process of learning and information absorption to that of the machine, implying that the two hold a similar underlying mechanism and that the former is no more superior to the latter. As an artist, I undoubtedly would love to believe in a fundamental superiority of human creativity (and intelligence) over our mechanical innovation. Yet, experiences like these—technology’s eerie ability to instantaneously “grasp” years of lived experience to arrive at a similar present action as humans—undeniably challenge this optimistic conviction. My conclusion seems to point to the fact that I succeeded in turning Chat GPT into “me,” a conclusion I didn’t anticipate would feel so intensely, simultaneously disturbing and fascinating.

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Throughout the project, the only other thought that occupied my mind was: if only my Chat-GPT had a physical body, hell, perhaps I would even let it “live” for me.