Chuan Tsai

Δrtificial Life is an interactive installation that explores what remains after AI generation. Rather than focusing on intelligence or autonomy, the work attends to how AI-generated artifacts continue to exist across digital and physical systems when they are no longer novel, in use, or fully erased. Through a feedback loop between physical interaction and digital consequence, artificial life is framed not as intelligence, but as a mode of existence unfolding between data and matter, use and neglect, systems and their consequences.

This project originates from my conflicted feelings toward AI-generated creations in contemporary art. While AI tools have made creation faster and more accessible, many generated images are often dismissed as “effortless” or “soulless.” This raised a question that became central to the work: what happens to creations that are denied recognition?

Over time, my computer accumulated countless imperfect AI-generated images—distorted figures, failed outputs, and unfinished attempts that were saved, forgotten, but never fully erased. Rather than treating them as waste, I began to see them as displaced artifacts: creations without a home. Δrtificial Life imagines a shelter for these overlooked forms.

Inspired by trash chutes and biological petri dishes, the work reflects on how discarded things do not simply disappear, but transform and give rise to new forms. By translating these residual images into physical objects within a responsive digital environment, Δrtificial Life explores artificial life not as intelligence or authorship, but as a lingering presence shaped by neglect, accumulation, and unintended consequence.