Frosty Morning is a multi-channel video installation generated by Neural Networks, which are rhythmic structures made by human beings that simulate our brain and nervous systems. After the artist’s research on Machine Learning and Neural Networks, an Artificial Neural Network is trained to “read” the front page of The New York Times from the last 6 years. By imitating the data set, it starts to render the newspaper, generate blurred image, and approach the form of reality, but never realizing the legible content. As a perpetual newspaper generator or a machine trying to predict “the future,” the work seems to reflect the reasonable and overwhelming world in the present.

Aesthetically, the moving image generated by AI somehow is reminiscent of abstract landscape paintings. From a technical perspective, the landscape corroded by AI is what we call the “latent space,” the high-dimensional space that is invisible between the form of history and memory. In Frosty Morning, the passage of time brought by the moving image has transferred this concept to the “latent time” which is outside of human time and bigger than the nature time.

Shi Zheng is an artist based in Shanghai and New York. His creations range from electronic music, audio-visual installation, and performance. In his large scale immersive installations, he attempts to extend the audience’s visual and audio experience which is considered as the integral part of his work. Since the composition of ‘Offset’ (2014), Shi has focused on the virtual landscape and the internal system behind the screen.

In the virtual world generated by the computer, Shi Zheng is not only a creator but also a wanderer. He indulges in the indifferent silence initiated by sound and image and attempts to share this lonesome land with his audience. Most recently, he starts to investigate the “latent time” through the lens of “computer vision” by integrating the perspective of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.