Shanshui Anthropocene (2023)

Shanshui Anthropocene presents a visual experience that serves as a confluence of Eastern aesthetics and pressing ecological concerns, where the aesthetic engagement of classical Chinese landscape painting (i.e., shanshui) interweaves with the non-positive consequences of humanity's imprint on nature. The artist distorts an idealized landscape (i.e., a Shanshui masterpiece) into a wasteland through customized AI imagery synthesis, transforming serene Shanshui into scenes of environmental decay. The underlying narrative of the Shanshui Anthropocene revolves around the juxtaposition of landscape painting and natural landscapes, along with their involvement with AI-generated imagery representing environmental degradation. The artist first collected a comprehensive list of historical eco-crisis events in text and image formats as a dataset and then trained and finetuned a custom AI that's capable of producing imagery reflecting the environmental degradation caused by human actions. The artist starts with a serene Shanshui masterpiece, gradually modifying it through a meticulously crafted transformation process. Using the customized AI, the artist erases and redraws parts of the landscape, gradually revealing the stark consequences of human activity. The final artwork is presented as still images and animations that showcase gradual transitions between the serene original and the degraded transformations. The visual progression from untouched beauty to a degraded environment can be a powerful metaphor for the detrimental impact of industrialization and consumerism on natural landscapes. By witnessing this transformation, the audience is prompted to reflect deeply on humanity's role in environmental degradation, contemplating their own impact and fostering a heightened sense of ecological awareness.