AI, music and paint converge in Venice

In 2018, at a chamber concert in Beijing, a vocal suite presented a sublime integration of fine arts and music to an audience. The work was inspired by an oil painting, Garden of Dreams, from the collection of Huacai Art Museum — an experimental endeavor that the museum's founder Dai Wenhua commissioned. The cross-disciplinary experiment also opened up a new path in her own creative work to make art that would bring people to transcend the boundaries among different art forms, ushering them into a state of philosophical reflection.

Dai is now in Venice, Italy with her latest sound installation, One Is All. The city is immersed in the vibrant atmosphere of art as the historic Biennale runs through November. In her work, Dai introduces AI algorithms to transform digital data into sound and an explosion of colors on a screen that resembles the scroll format of a classical Chinese painting.

The work is on show as part of Metamorphosis: Beyond the Real. Searching for Victoria Lu — When Humans and AI Think Together, the Story Begins, an exhibition created by noted artist and art curator Victoria Lu, at the exhibition space of Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Historically, Venice was an important port through which trade and cultures of the East entered the lives of Europeans. Through La Biennale, the city is a major platform for Chinese artists to showcase their works. Four years ago at the Biennale, Dai displayed a 27-meter splash-ink scroll combined with virtual reality that was inspired by Luo Shen Fu, a lyrical work written during the late second to early third centuries. She has continued to create art as a means of connecting the visual with the auditory, the East with the West, and the past with the future.