Member Spotlight: Zhiwan Cheung

Olivia Sherman
This is Olivia Sherman with the New Media Caucus interviewing Zhiwan Chang.
Where are you located?

Zhiwan Cheung
I'm currently located in Milwaukee, WI.

Olivia Sherman
What brought you here?

Zhiwan Cheung
I'm currently finishing up my PhD there. I should be done in a year.

Olivia Sherman
What is your PhD in?

Zhiwan Cheung
It is in trying to figure out how to use AI and the possibilities it opens up in terms of incorporating it within my own art practice.

Olivia Sherman
I was actually wondering about that because I've seen a lot of conversations about using AI in art, and a lot of people say that it's unethical. But you talked a bit about your ethical use of AI [in your artist statement]. Could you talk about how you use it as a tool or material that supplements your art instead of something that overtakes it?

Zhiwan Cheung
I think that's a complicated question, and I think the question of ethics is also one that has lots of different meanings. I think you could argue the standard way of how artists operate is one that many of them do not recognize. All the people that help them make their work, you know, you have artists, studios, but there's this idea of the art genius, which also raises a lot of ethical questions. So there's varying degrees of the ethics of it. I could talk about how I see it, which is that I think there's also a lot of different camps in terms of how one uses AI. There's definitely a certain segment of the population that's interested in AI as pushing a button and then- voila, sort of outputs that- I guess you can call it art. I think we all know a lot of times, art is whoever decides to call it art, right? But I guess I'm curious about using AI in terms of thinking about it using it as a tool, and possibly a sort of collaborator.
I was thinking a lot about how certain artists use AI to kind of discover things that they may not have thought about before. I oftentimes quote Sasha Stiles (https://www.sashastiles.com/) and Ivana Tao, and they kind of talk about how they use AI to uncover meanings. I mean, more specifically I know Ivana uses it by going through, step by step, through the lay in space of, as I understand, her own code. And kind of seeing where, within this lay in space, the image will go to. And given the complexities of all these different strands, and networks and narratives, that maybe the AI can kind of help you get to a place that you weren't expecting before. But of course, they're all here as a tool. That's kind of how I see it- like a tool. Kind of like a paint brush. But it is not the sole means to create the art. There's still a lot of decision making to happen before you get to the final product.

Olivia Sherman
Before I saw your work, I was on the fence about using AI in art, but I really liked how you used it. I thought it was very interesting. So, I'm wondering, does the fact that you're using AI add a layer to the intended meaning of the piece, or is it used more for aesthetic purposes?

Zhiwan Cheung
I mean, I try to think about it in terms of an intended meaning. Otherwise, I'll just make a painting or a sculpture, which is also fine. But I think the one piece that I have in my website, A Matter of Orientation, I used AI purposely to kind of think about how AI takes in lots of data and then kind of outputs a sort of generalized idea of what we want.
I think Hito Steyerl (https://www.moma.org/artists/43752-hito-steyerl) talked about this recently. She published this article called “The Mean Image”. It was an update on her previous paper, “The Poor Image”. But you know how these models kind of generate a mean, in terms of an average, but also a mean in terms of this idealized state. And the example she gave was: If you put in just a generic term like man or woman in a lot of these models, it puts out this idealized, beautiful, stereotypically beautiful looking man or woman. In a way that she describes as a ‘mean’, very few people actually look like that.
And so thinking about that in terms of Edward Said (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Said) and his book “Orientalism”, and how the term Oriental has lot has a very long problematic history.
I went into Midjourney and I purposely asked for Oriental-like backgrounds and textures, and then these were then used as inspiration to create an Unreal Engine.
Platform or, a game within Unreal, basically. There’s still the translation of this kind of 2D image, that Midjourney kind of gave me as I was typing things such as “Buddhist temple”, “Oriental temple” or something like that or and then so they gave me an image and then I had to still translate that into 3D space.
And then I did that also with the text. So I gave it text- some combination of my own inputs and Edward Said’s text and ran it through an AI, a journal entry sort of system. I wasn't expecting anything. One of the examples that I really liked was the AI kind of started talking about ingredients of foods, and Edward Said doesn't really talk about food as a way to talk about the Oriental, but the AI system was talking about sesame oil and soy sauce, and these generalized ideas of food, and it wasn't an area that I was thinking about. So I kind of see AI as allowing me to kind of rethink certain things in a way that I wasn't thinking about before.
And also, to clarify it for people listening: the idea of Orientalism, his book looks at the history of the term, how it's sort of the West kind of looking at the East and also the absurdity of the term because technically the term expands the area from the Middle East all the way to Japan. You have Oriental rugs from Persia, to Oriental colors and wallpaper from this idea of China or Old China or whatever, and then this kind of was pushed forward in the Midjourney prompts, because I'd ask it for an Oriental wall texture, which was then used to apply to the Unreal models. It would give me walls with stone in them that a lot of times they kind of look like Thai text. Obviously, a lot of these models have trouble with text, but it was Thai words or Chinese words. But when we're asking for Oriental walls, technically it should include some Persian- you know, Middle Eastern languages- all the North African languages like Morocco and things like that. But it didn't, because we're kind of thinking about what the models consider to be Oriental.

Olivia Sherman
What inspires your work?

Zhiwan Cheung
You know, I know someone who they says they get inspired taking showers. They go in the shower and that’s the gestation period to think about ideas. I mean, I'm inspired by storytelling. I say this a lot. I am interested in how stories kind of shape who we are. I've mentioned this a lot in other contexts, but I think about Ken Liu (https://kenliu.name/), who's a science fiction writer.
And I saw him talk-I'm paraphrasing this- but he basically said, stories define who we are. It's because of stories that ideas of nationalism, patriotism and the idea that one would even go to war for your country and die for your country- that can only happen through stories. The stories that tell us what tribe we're in, why? Why we would even want to give up our life for a place, for a nation state- nation states are relatively new, but still for your neighborhood, your tribe, your region wherever. And those stories defined us.
So I'm thinking about storytelling as a way to kind of talk about who we are. I use it to talk about through my own experiences. What I've experienced, where I've travelled- some of it is diaristic. Sometimes, I travel or meet a friend and then they tell me about a story and that can be the kernel to start an investigation. A lot of these take the form of video art, but the videos oftentimes lend themselves to photographic prints, and more recently, since I've started working with 3D, I've also been making a lot of 3D printed sculptures.

Olivia Sherman
What factors led to the development of your style and your use of new media instead of traditional media?

Zhiwan Cheung
I mean, I started as a painter.
I think a lot of artists started out painting because it's the easiest thing. It's also the thing that's most obviously offered at most schools and depending on the art school, the other fields, especially sculpture. Which can be anything at this point, and they're usually just people. I didn't really think about sculpture until after I graduated from undergrad, but I started out painting and then I think a lot of the artists that I was thinking about, like Adrian Piper (http://www.adrianpiper.com), or Felix Gonzalez Torres (https://www.moma.org/artists/2233-felix-gonzalez-torres). They were what I realized what I was interested in. The stories they're telling. I mean, I always say I fell in love with Felix Gonzalez Torres's two clocks piece (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81074) before I even saw it.
I think I saw the piece probably 10 years after I learned about it. And the only reason that I liked it was the story. The story, the myth, the mythology that it kind of brought up. Adrian Piper's works kind of function a lot of times in similar way. A lot of them only exist as photographs or conceptual ideas, and what you're actually seeing in the piece are fragments of the actual performance that she did, or something like that. For me at least, I know there are a lot of narrative painters, and painting has a long history of narration. But I guess I was more interested in how these kinds of stories exist long form, and eventually I settled on videos as a way to kind of tell these stories. I've always been sort of inclined towards new media as a tool. It was never the thing that the art was about. I played with Arduinos. I eventually kind of made my own multi-channeled video system using Raspberry Pi. When AI started coming out and I started seeing some of the things that were happening, I thought that this was something that definitely I'd be interested in. So I paired that with my time going to do my PhD as a time to allow myself to explore AI, learn a little bit of coding and also reframe how I kind of approach these works. I'm very interested in video arts, but also how's that expand in terms of using AI as a tool.
Also thinking about these gaming worlds, but also thinking about video through a digital camera, a non-physical camera that is not constrained by gravity. Basically, it would be a multimillion dollar shot zooming through the air, but I can do that in a video in a video game. So it's a little different.

Olivia Sherman
What brought you to the New Media Caucus?

Zhiwan Cheung
I think I just was meeting different people in the in the digital art sphere and at one point someone mentioned the New Media Caucus, and I followed the website and I listened to a few podcasts and I signed up for the newsletter. I've been really interested in the entire platform, the community that's surrounding it. I think it's a great place that offers critical discourse about art, about technology. The opportunities and articles, I find really inspiring and the community seems really great.

Olivia Sherman
What does receiving this award mean to you?

Zhiwan Cheung
It's a real honor to be receiving the award. It's always an honor to receive any sort of award. I think artists oftentimes work a lot of hours in their studio, which can be a kind of a bubble. I mean, I know art itself doesn't exist in a bubble, but artists in studios- a lot of times, you're just sort of listening to your own head.
And so I think these awards offer a way to just tell you you're doing something right.
You know, offering a way to kind of expand the conversation, kind of like I'm talking to you, and continue to give me momentum to keep doing what I like to do.

Olivia Sherman
Do you have any projects that you're currently working on that you want to share with us?

Zhiwan Cheung
Yeah. Right now, one of the projects I'm working on it's called 18th Wenyun St.
This particular piece involves my grandfather or my mom's side of the family and their family history in southern China and Guangzhou. It's sort of like a big long-term projects that I never expected to be doing this when I went to China. I, my parents never expected me to go back to China.
I always say this because my name, Zhiwan, the phonetics of it is Cantonese and the pronunciation is Cantonese, but not Mandarin. And there's this translation issue of the Cantonese to Mandarin, so me being in China was never part of the long term plan for my parents or me. But when I got there, where I happened to be was really close to where my mom grew up. And at some point, my family fled China because of the Cultural Revolution, and the property that my grandfather owned was taken over and at some point repurposed, as I understand it, into a factory and then now it's a middle and elementary school that stands on that plot of land.
So 18th Wenyun Street is the address of that place, and I spent the whole time that I was in China trying to get access to that place.
There are a lot of strict rules about people visiting school. There's been a lot of history of children getting kidnapped throughout the history of China, so it's hard to enter any elementary, middle, even high school, even for the parents, much less a foreigner who has no affiliation to the school. There's no reason for them to let me in. So while I was there, I reached out to different artists trying to find someone local. Who knows? Someone who knows someone. Right before I left to come to Milwaukee, I found someone who knew the owner of the school. She let me in.
And I 3D scanned the entire area, the outside and the inside. So, I'm trying this project sort of thinking about, what does it mean to try to capture this memory of a place that, for the most part, doesn't exist? None of the original buildings are there.
I'm scanning a thing that is on the land of where my mom grew up and where my grandfather had his home and great grandfather originally kind of settled there.
And so this is all being imported into Unreal. And I have no idea what form this will take. I did a quick video for an exhibition I did in Macau last year.
It was more like an experimentation, a chance to do something with the non-physical camera. I think there's a lot more things I want to do with it, like the 3D scans can become 3D printed objects. I have recordings of different family members kind of talking about the space so I don't know what form it will take, but that's sort of what I'm currently working on.

Olivia Sherman
Do you have a website or anything that people can see your work?

Zhiwan Cheung
Yeah, you can check me out at https://zhiwan.is/