Alex Lee. Juried Artist
Constellations
VR Program at QUT Kelvin Grove
Artist Statement
“the Fold: episode II” is a virtual reality-based art game involving synthetic agents driven by machine learning. Each level of the experience involves agents of differing complexity. These agents are non-playable characters (NPCs) and are comprised of historical elements found from either Eurocentric or Sinocentric history and philosophy. The game itself is essentially an ‘escape the room’ experience, some rooms involve puzzles while others are more spatially challenging.
Inspired by Yuk Hui’s book, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, this VR-based ‘escape the room’ project highlights the similarities and differences of technics as it relates to Western (episode I) and Eastern (episode II) philosophy including structuralist & surrealist literature, sentient bodies, metaphysics, mathematics, the virtual object, Buddhism, Zen principles, Qi (氣), and problematizes the affirmation of technics, its outputs and technologies as anthropologically universal within the frame of VR, AI, 3D animation, and video games.
Elements from ‘episode I’ creep into ‘episode II’ as an allegory of the colonialist impulses East Asia faced throughout much of the modern era. Spatial thinking differs structurally between these two spheres of knowledge. Because of this, technical thinking (technics) evolved differently throughout much of the period before modernism. ‘episode II’ begins to fold elements of these two spheres together as a symbiotic virtual world of knowledge. ‘the Fold: episode II’ provides a glimpse into the performative potential of AI as a machine collaborator to create new forms of artistic expression.
About the artists
Alex M. Lee is an artist who utilizes 3D animation, video game engines, extended reality platforms, machine learning and the potential of simulation technologies to investigate contemporary modes of representation, artifice and technical images – culling from concepts within science, science fiction, physics, philosophy, and modernity.
Born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in the United States of America, he received his BFA (2005) with emphasis in Photography and Digital Imaging and MFA (2009) with an emphasis in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is an Assistant Professor of Animation at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design the Arts with Affiliated Position at Mesa City’s Media and Immersive eXperience Center.
Lee has exhibited internationally in North America, Europe and Asia. Selected exhibitions include: Gallery Hakusen, Tokyo, Japan; Mio Photo, Osaka, Japan; Gallery DOS, Seoul, Korea; Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, Korea; Eyebeam: Center for Art & Technology, New York, NY; LEV Festival, Madrid, Spain; Paris/Berlin Rencontres Internationales; Elektra International Digital Art Festival, Montreal, Canada; New Images XR Art Fair, Paris, France.
His work has been published in articles covering art, science, and culture including: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Metaverse Creativity, Canadian Art, and Routledge Press. Lee has received generous support for his research projects from sources including Unity Meta XR, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Trinity Square Video, the Institute for Electronic Arts, and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center.
Credits: Alex M. Lee