Yunzhi Melissa Li
Master In Training
Master in Training is a four-screen still life setup that keeps translating itself. A simple staged scene is read by the OpenAI vision model and turned into text, which is then used to generate a new image with generative AI. The image is pushed through the image-to-image process again, allowing the drift to build with each pass. On the final screen, the system watches the latest output and tries to find a matching real photo online, as if the internet could confirm what is true.
The work emerges from a deeply personal practice of memory retrieval through the cloud. In an age when almost all photographs reside online, recalling a moment often begins with a digital search for an image. *Master in Training* engages with this dependency, prompting a critical exploration of what it means for memory to transform into mere retrieval. It questions the evolution of "mastery" from the Renaissance concept of the master artist to today's contemporary discourse surrounding training datasets and artificial intelligence models. Through this lens, the work invites viewers to reflect on the interplay between technology, memory, and the nature of artistic practice in our increasingly digital world.
Yunzhi / Melissa Li is a Chengdu-born, London-based computational artist whose practice spans interactive installations, web-based experiments and immersive 3D environments. She examines how images, code, and audience interaction shape our sense of identity, memory and place. Her works have been exhibited in the UK and internationally, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Photographers’ Gallery, Hypha Studios, Copeland Gallery, Peckham Digital, among others.
Yunzhi / Melissa Li is a Chengdu-born, London-based computational artist whose practice spans interactive installations, web-based experiments and immersive 3D environments. She examines how images, code, and audience interaction shape our sense of identity, memory and place. Her works have been exhibited in the UK and internationally, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Photographers’ Gallery, Hypha Studios, Copeland Gallery, Peckham Digital, among others.
At the heart of Li’s work is the translation of the intangible experiences, making the unseen visible. She gathers data, whether that is from public image archives, 3D scans of everyday objects and recordings of personal stories, and then layers them into physical and digital spaces. Chairs, tables and screens become shifting canvases where virtual textures appear to merge with the material world. This blending of online and organic systems invites viewers to consider how their personal experiences, histories and digital traces intertwine.