LASER Talks in HONG KONG

Ways of Seeing in the Age of AI: New Optical Epistemologies

Featuring a screening of AI Hyperrealism (Chapter 1) and LUMI followed by a roundtable discussion, this programme interrogates how machine vision is reshaping the boundaries of visual truth, memory, and authenticity.

Chaired & moderated by:Emilie Choi Sin-yi (Curator & moderator), Samson Young (Moderator)
Lisa Park So Young (Chair)

EVENT INFO

When: 13 March/6pm/GMT+8, Find your time zone here

Where: Multimedia Theatre, Level 1, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre (M1060):

Access Info: https://cityu.zoom.us/j/82904944404 (Zoom Webinar)

This event will be a largely on-site event at the School of Creative Media, CityU HK, with 3 panelists (artist) joining via Zoom, and 1 panelist (scientist interlocutor) joining in person alongside two moderators. The online access will be managed as a Zoom webinar via the audience link shown above.

CONTEXT

As artificial intelligence reconfigures the nature of perception, this programme interrogates the shifting grounds of visual truth. Bringing together AI Hyperrealism (Chapter 1 of Anatomy of Non-Fact) by Martyna Marciniak and LUMI by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka, the event explores how machine vision transforms image production, information transmission, and our sense of reality.

Both works treat the image not as a static record, but as an evolving epistemic event. AI Hyperrealism illuminates the collapse of authenticity, exposing the mechanisms of a “post-truth” landscape. Conversely, LUMI reconstructs lost icy landscapes from archival light data, transforming the scientific metric of albedo into a poetic instrument for visualizing memory and climate.

Moving beyond the mere spectacle of AI art, this programme adopts a critical stance on the changing paradigm of visual knowledge. The screening is followed by a roundtable featuring the filmmakers alongside Prof. De Kai, whose expertise in machine learning and AI ethics bridges the gap between computational logic and aesthetic practice and it will deepen the inquiry into synthetic agency. Moderated by acclaimed media artist Prof. Samson Young and curator Emilie Choi Sin Yi, the discussion will bridge global theoretical frameworks with local artistic perspectives.

Together, we trace how the optical has become a site of negotiation between sensory experience and machine learning. Join us to examine how the “synthetic” is redefining the boundaries between fact, fiction, and simulation.

Speakers Bios

Martyna Marciniak’s (PL/DE) practice bridges media theory, and legal imaginaries to trace how power inscribes itself through image regimes and visual infrastructures. Often revisiting historical events, her work engages in a form of pataforensics—poking at the tropes of scientific and forensic aesthetics, revealing their uncertainties, contradictions and lapses. Oscillating between sculpture, video and animation, she writes visual counter histories, and smuggles in other ways of seeing. Her work has been shown by Onassis Stegi, Copenhagen Contemporary, Ars Electronica, Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Warsaw Biennale, LABoral Centro de Arte, among others. She is the 2025 CERN Collide resident. Her project ‘Anatomy of Non-Fact’ received the Award of Distinction Prix Ars Electronica in 2025. (https://www.martyna.digital/)

Jussi Parikka Finnish cultural historian Jussi Parikka is professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University where he  is the co-director of the Environmental Media and Aesthetics research program. He also holds an affiliation with University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art). JP was elected as member of Academia Europaea in 2021 in the section Film, Media, and Visual Studies. JP's work has focused on various aspects of digital culture, media theory, environmental humanities, and art-science-technology collaborations both in writing and in his curatorial work such as the co-curated exhibitions Weather Engines (2022) and Climate Engines (2023-2024).  His recent publications include the co-authored Lab Book (2022), Operational Images (2023), and the co-authored Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (2024). JP's books have been translated into twelve languages. (https://www.au.dk/en/parikka@cc.au.dk)

Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher. He is currently a grantee of a Leonardo scholarship from the BBVA Foundation. His practice addresses the entwining of media and matter. His projects involve different techniques, spanning from installation to image, sound and computational processes where so-called natural and planetary temporalities conflate with human visual cultures, knowledge systems and politics. His work has been exhibited and discussed internationally, including venues such as Transmediale, Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Design Museum Shenzhen, Tabakalera (San Sebastian), LeBal Paris and the Cultural Centers of Spain in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He is the author, together with Jussi Parikka, of the book Living Surfaces. Images, Plants and Environments of Media (MIT Press 2024).(https://abelardogfournier.org/)

De Kai is the author of the award winning book Raising AI, which MIT Press will release in paperback in March 2026, and recently founded the Empathetic AI Institute. He is a pioneering AI professor who invented and built the web’s first global AI translator, laying the groundwork for tools like Google Translate and Bing Translator, and was honored by the ACL as a Founding Fellow for his decades of breakthroughs, which lie at the intersection of language, AI, cognition, and ethics. De Kai is at Hong Kong's UST and at Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute, served on Google’s inaugural AI ethics advisory council and is an independent director at the AI ethics think tank The Future Society.(https://dek.ai/)

SPONSORS

About LASER Talks

Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks is a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversaCons with the wider public. LASER stands for Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous, an initiative by Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST). Its mission is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building in over 60 cities and 5 continents worldwide. LASER website

About the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

The School of Creative Media (SCM) at City University of Hong Kong was founded in 1998 as one of the first institutions in Asia dedicated to creative media as an interdisciplinary field of art, science and technology. Today, it brings together artistic practice, critical theory and technological research across contemporary media art and moving-image practices, game studies and game design, media and cultural studies, and computational fields including artificial intelligence, robotics and human–computer interaction.

These intersecting areas contribute to international debates on art–science practice and computational culture and directly inform the School’s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, where studio practice, critical inquiry and technological experimentation are embedded within an active research environment.

SCM also serves as a regional platform for experimental media practice and cross-sector collaboration, connecting academic research with artistic production and scholarly exchange. Through its programmes, research initiatives and public engagement, the School advances inquiry and creative exploration into how media technologies co-evolve with our culture and society.

About Videotage

Established in 1986, Videotage is one of Hong Kong’s oldest non-profit media art organisations. Dedicated to the presentation, promotion, production, and preservation of time-based media, our mission is to cultivate a comprehensive platform that nurtures emerging media artists while fostering a vibrant creative community in Hong Kong and the Pacific Asia region as a whole.

Initially launching as an artist-run collective, Videotage has evolved into an influential network that champions experimental and interdisciplinary art practices. We facilitate cultural exchange by partnering with both local and international institutions while curating a range of programmes to connect artists, scientists, academics, and entrepreneurs. Our efforts extend to broadening community exploration with respect to new technologies and encouraging public discussion on digital culture to ultimately enhance digital literacy.

Committed to media art promotion, Videotage maintains an extensive collection—Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC)—spanning from the 1980s to the present and including copies of artwork from Hong Kong and the greater Pacific Asia region, the goal of which is to create an active archive reflecting the media art evolution. We also produce articles, newsletters, and presentations—both online and offline—to develop interpretation and educational resources and promote ongoing discussion and understanding.