Personal Information
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Given name: Albert Cheng-Syun









Surname: Tang









Email: cheng-syun.tang@uib.no









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Your contribution
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Title: Seeds of Truth - Questioning the visual representation of wor(l)ds in the age of AI









Format: Project presentation (2)









Main language: English









Abstract:
Dominated and pushed by the AI industry, the grand narrative and practices of GenAI has become a hegemony that sees the world—whether it's physical or conceptual—extractable, computable, modellable and profitable. Consequentially, our daily visual world has been flooded with synthetic media that not only spread particular ideologies in politics, but alter the ways we perceive and "see" the world in reality. Now, the visual representation of a fact, a word, a truth or an affair can be algorithmically defined and outputted by GenAI models. When what we are seeing are no longer believing, conceptual worlds—shaped by our visual world—are endangered. How can artistic research—through the field of design—critically respond to the synthetic realities mediated via visual means?

The presentation centres on my artistic research project Border of Democracy - Human, interface, surveillance capitalism and its outcome—Seeds of Truth—a real-time interactive installation utilising Stable Diffusion to make visible the relationship between visual representation of word(s) and GenAI in politics. In the realm of image GenAI, a "seed" refer to a series of numbers that instructs AI on how to generate an image. Each seed ensures the generated output is reproducible. Through my research, I realised that seeds create "versions" of the relationship between a word and associated visual elements, which visually defines what the "word's world" is about.

In the presentation, I will unpack the research process and reflection by showing experiments on deepfake technology, how the visual representations of word(s) as prompts are relentlessly "defined" by GenAI, and the artistic outcome Seeds of Truth. By sharing how I problematised GenAI by repurposing GenAI, the presentation serves as an urgent meeting point for collectively discussing and reflecting on how design and artistic research can respond to the synthetic and post-synthetic realities the world is facing.










Link to the Exposition :  (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/shared/4463cb5eb79b41ace5d996612d4484c1)









Image: https://test.sar2026.ie/system/files/webform/submit_contribution/307/Seeds%20of%20Truth_Cover2.jpg









Short biographies of the presenter(s):
- Albert Cheng-Syun Tang 湯承勳(TW) is an Associate Professor in Interaction Design at Department of Design at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music, Design at the University of Bergen, Norway. As a designer and artistic researcher, his research interests are centred around the intersection of design, technology and power. This nexus has been the central context where he operates design as a medium to raise critical questions on the relationships among technological progression, surveillance capitalism and democracy.










Previous presentations or iterations of the research:
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Requirements
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Additional information:
The artistic research project Border of Democracy - Human, interface, surveillance capitalism (2023-2025) was supported by strategic fund from the Faculty of Fine Art, Music, Design, University of Bergen, Norway.










Spatial and technical requirements :
A/V equipment: Projector or large scale display and speakers.










Potential risks or ethical concerns:
Due to the nature of the research project, the presentation will contain some AI-generated explicit/nude images, which might disturb some of the audience. This will be addressed before the presentation so that the audience are informed and understand the necessity of it. 










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