Arts in the Anthropocene

We propose and look for the foundation of future aesthetics based on the notion of “second nature” that incorporates industrial byproducts/waste as the part of the natural world. Our past approach included feeding living plants with metal-polluted water of various concentrations to look for the appearance that co-live with the pollution, as well as constructing a waterfall installation with recycled waste and florescent dye. Both create an experiential conflict for the viewers, evoking introspection. We are currently exploring deep learning AI technology to construct such imagery with neural networks.

Chen, P. H. & Liu, I. C. H. (2026). “Optimization and Mobile Deployment for Anthropocene Neural Style Transfer”. Submitted to SIGGRAPH 2026. (preprint:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21141)
Liu, I. C. H. (2023). “Complexity, Environment and Future Aesthetics: From New Media to Non-Media”. The 13th SAR Conference on Artistic Research (Preprint https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/njevw)