#5 Zo Fan - The Artist in the Age of AI | Secret Sauce

Description

Zo Fan is a multidisciplinary artist from Singapore, working at the crossroads of photography, filmmaking, and artificial intelligence. Her work has been exhibited across Asia, Europe, and the United States, earning recognition for its ability to seamlessly blend tradition with cutting-edge technology.

By integrating AI into her creative process, Zo explores new artistic frontiers, challenging conventional notions of authorship and storytelling. Her work is a dialogue between the past and the future, drawing inspiration from cultural heritage while embracing the transformative potential of artificial intelligence.

In this episode, Zo shares her unique perspective on what it means to be an artist in the age of AI. She delves into the impact of technology on creative expression, the challenges and opportunities of working with AI, and how she envisions the future of art in an increasingly digital world.

A recurrent theme throughout Zo’s work is the place of spirituality in the modern age. In a world shaped by technology, how do we reconcile our relationship with the divine? She brilliantly demonstrates human expression will continue to prevail with its flaws, its excess and above all its heart. Like painting, photography or film, AI is what you make of it.

📲 Follow Zo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeandzo/

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Zo Fan est une artiste pluridisciplinaire originaire de Singapour, évoluant à l’intersection de la photographie, du cinéma et de l’intelligence artificielle. Son travail a été exposé en Asie, en Europe et aux États-Unis, captivant les spectateurs par sa capacité à fusionner harmonieusement tradition et technologies de pointe.

En intégrant l’IA dans son processus créatif, Zo explore de nouveaux horizons artistiques, remettant en question les notions classiques d’auteur et de narration. Son œuvre établit un dialogue entre le passé et l’avenir, puisant son inspiration dans l’héritage culturel tout en embrassant les possibilités transformatrices de l’intelligence artificielle.

Dans cet épisode, Zo partage son regard unique sur ce que signifie être artiste à l’ère de l’IA. Elle aborde l’impact de la technologie sur la création, les défis et opportunités liés à l’IA, ainsi que sa vision du futur de l’art dans un monde de plus en plus digitalisé. Un thème récurrent dans l’œuvre de Zo est la place de la spiritualité à l’ère moderne. Dans un monde façonné par la technologie, comment réconcilier notre relation au divin? Elle démontre brillamment que l’expression humaine continuera de prévaloir, avec ses imperfections, ses excès et, surtout, son authenticité. Comme la peinture, la photographie ou le cinéma, c’est à l’artiste de donner un sens à l’intelligence artificielle.

📲 Suivez Zo sur Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeandzo/

Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Transcription

Speaker #0
so let's go yes hi zo hi julian it's nice to have you on the podcast really happy because it's been a while since we've been discussing this interview so welcome
Speaker #1
yes thank you hi julian and friends on the podcast can you can you say a few words in french i know you speak french Ah oui, yes. De quoi? On parle quoi? Je m'appelle Zo. I'm a friend of Julien's and hello to all Julien's friends who are listening to this podcast.
Speaker #0
Great, thank you. So Zoe, you're a visual artist, a director and a photographer. So could you tell us what brings you to photography, then to directing films and now being an AI artist?
Speaker #1
Like the long version or the short version?
Speaker #0
As you like. The long version would be good.
Speaker #1
Yeah? Okay, wait. Just a really fun part, I mean, starting with the first bit of the question, how I got into photography was really because I think I somehow always had a camera in my hand when I was a kid. When I was really, really young, I was always in front of a camera. I somehow loved to be photographed, which I quickly grew out of, I think at around five years old. Then I started holding the camera a lot without even knowing what I was really doing. And then when I think I was in primary school, which is about like eight, ten years old. Is that it? My dad had... the DSLR camera and this was at a time where there were very little like it was just out right the DSLR cameras and I he didn't use it so I just quotation marks stole it from him and use it all the time and then I think the the idea of becoming a photographer really came in high school when I had to choose like my discipline whether I my major for my high school because I chose like a special high school where you could specialize in a tech like technical thing instead of studying math and the boring science stuff. So it was down to business or cinema. And that was when I did a very hard choice of choosing cinema because at that time I didn't know, like how would you know what you want to do in 10 years if you didn't even know what you want to do in 10 days kind of thing, you know, at 16. But you know what, I made the choice and the rest is history. So for me, I went straight into cinema and photography was always a thing that was in tandem, like it was exactly the same. process even though it's very different cinema and photography but they always meant like very complementary things to me so i couldn't have done one without the other and then now moving on to ai is that it yes how do you integrate ai in your creative process and uh how did you how were you introduced to ai basically so it's quite for me it's quite a beautiful story because i've started my personal project called own your roots since 2019 and at the beginning it was really about doing a lot of things manually. So I would do photo shoots, I would do music videos and a lot of shoots for this project where I want to bring the traditional to the future. But because of the resources, because of the sheer amount of time it needs to make one single shoot happen, I end up only doing maybe one per year because I have other work going on. And also just if you think about it, the amount of time is required. to it's not just about the budget it's just about finding a team that could see your vision before it existed and because i was trying to do things that were really out of the world right so just to be able to find a team to work on a shoot together to cover i don't know location styling makeup the model the storytelling the editing because i do my quite a lot of editing on my personal project photos um it was just it's just a lot right and then AI came into play. And at first, I was really like all the other creatives. Like, oh, no, number one is going to steal all our jaws. It's so scary. Like, what is it? Blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I think everything changed when I really just jumped into it. So it can only, the relationship can only happen when you actually stop observing it and start using it. And then I went through so many different tools in AI because AI is like two letters. But it encompasses so much things. And that was when I realized that it has... become really my, something like the third camera in my tool set, because it's not just something that I use to make my life easier. Sure, like now I have literally no excuse between what is in my mind and in what I put out, because the only thing that's stopping myself back is myself. It ends up, I cannot blame having not enough budget or not enough location, not enough team, not enough time. I can't do that. And it's just me and my, the hard work that I put in to Use AI as this camera that can help me shoot things that my first two cameras cannot in the real life. Yeah, so that's the story.
Speaker #0
So yeah, it helps you save time, save money and do more things on your own.
Speaker #1
I think it definitely helps me save. Sorry, just to jump in. It definitely helps me do more things on my own, which I would have done also anyway. But I'm not sure if the time is... I mean, sure, in comparison to a human thing where you need a year to do one stuff, of course, now it's a lot of time. But I would tell, because I am a huge advocate for this, like, it does not... I don't spend less time doing AI. In fact, I spend much, much more time. put like just throwing myself into all the creations that i use because it takes so much time to do something that you really can own as like your own work and how do you um let's say uh balance ai with photography or
Speaker #0
with uh traditional you know uh video shooting because we tend to say if going back to photography we tend to say that Photography captures the truth, but AI can manipulate it. And we see that almost every day nowadays. So how do you reconcile the two? How do you find the right balance as an artist?
Speaker #1
I thought it was a very beautiful thing, your question of like, so in photography, you're chasing for the truth.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you know, you capture the instant. That's what we tend to say, that it's the truth of a single image. But with AI, you can, you know, you have deep fakes, you can alter perception, you can alter the truth, basically, because you can have, I don't know, a blue dog walking on water, or you can do pretty much anything, which is fantastic for so many reasons. But there's also some kind of fakeness in AI. So I wonder, as an artist, how you see that? Do Do you see that as an opportunity or do you think there are there's a need for rules to actually find the right balance.
Speaker #1
I think it's funny because I think balance is exactly this one word that I never really see in my own works because let's just pull that question back again. Your example of the blue dog floating on water, something like this, what is it? Technically, if you think about it, can photography do that? Yes, absolutely. You know what I'm saying? With Photoshop, even without Photoshop, yes, you have to erase a little bit of lines even if you hang the dog in mid-space in real life. There's a lot of things you can do. Yes, of course. I don't think it's just photography. Like all arts, every creator is out there to seek some kind of truth, whether it's a truth that's in themselves or a truth that they want to understand about this universe. I think that doesn't change if you're a creator that's very genuine about wanting to put something out there that means something to yourself. You have to seek for a truth. But... that means that in the end of the day, whether it's AI or whether it's photography, it's really up to the person who uses it. Because for example, for me, I wouldn't say never say never, right? But I don't think I'll ever use AI to do deep fakes because that's just not what I want to do. But yet at the same time, someone could do deep fake as in, you know, with other methods other than AI. But sure, we can, you know, put it at that. So that's why I think to sum it up, for me, if it's never already, like it was never really about balance. It's more about using what I have to express what I want to express inside. And AI came along as a very helpful partner to do that. And so I always believe that it's more about the person with everything. And this could be interesting to segue into when I was telling you, I think the last time we met, how I realized that AI is, for me, is almost a tool or is a tool for me to find myself.
Speaker #0
You see AI as a partner. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Because that's really interesting. It's not a tool for you. It's more than that.
Speaker #1
Oh yeah. I think from the very early on, I think I was talking to a friend about this. And this was the very early stages of me using AI. I really felt like it was... Yeah, okay, sorry. I was just thinking through my own process. Back then, even while I was using an AI that was giving me very... shitty reasons. As in, just very basic. It was just the start of me exploring AI and I didn't have so much mastery over it yet. But I had this very keen sense of how I was almost like speaking to the AI. So yeah, sure, people feel like they're speaking to ChatGP because that's what ChatGP is engineered to to make us feel like, right? But even when I'm entering prompts into AI because I used it, when I throw myself, I throw myself into something, I throw myself into something. That's why I say balance is never really a word for me. But so when I first threw myself into it, I could see how the machine or the information or the data set, if you would call it, the crux of it, reacted to all the prompts. And so it's like the more I got to know it, it's just like a friend, right? The more I got to know it, the more I know how to speak to this friend. Like what kind of words could come up with more interesting conversations with this friend. And yeah, I was just really conversing with it without. um you know what i'm saying it's not about asking how are you today or what do you just eat but really seeing what the this friend reacted or gave me in exchange for what i put in that that made me feel like it was a real like it was really something more than just uh i tell you what to do and then you just give that to me kind of thing because i could see i could feel the machine kind of changing as I used it.
Speaker #0
It's a conversation. So this is why you were saying that it saves you time, but maybe not that much time because you also spend a lot of time talking to the program, to the machine and to see the conversation evolve and what kind of creation it can bring.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #0
When did you start experimenting with AI? Right in the beginning when it was released, when we had access to, I don't know, Midjourney, Runway, these kind of tools?
Speaker #1
I think I got into AI, the very serious time was probably around 2022. Like that was when I really started using it in almost daily life creating kind of thing. I even took a transition year in between to, I mean so the last two years were really kind of, this year and last year were really kind of transition years where I took time off my other commission commercial work to really focus on my personal project. So that's the main time that I spent with AI really.
Speaker #0
If we go back to the beginning of your career as an artist, you started as a photographer. Then you moved to directing films. Now you use AI in your whole creative process. So is there, let's say, a word or a way to define who you are as an artist?
Speaker #1
constantly evolving and it doesn't apply to you it's an interesting question but it might be more interesting answered by you like from your perspective when you see my works right it doesn't matter whether it's the early ones or let's just say whatever you've seen so far which is probably more the ai stuff what
Speaker #0
would you call what will you define my style as like so it's a good question in it so i don't i don't know all your work yeah and it's true that most of what i'm familiar with this VIA stuff. But I would say that there's some kind of It's a combination of tradition and modernity. You really bring, let's say, traditional Asian myths and legends, and we will talk about that with the latest technology that enables it to, let's say, to shine or to be experienced in a new way. And this is what I like. It's really colorful, it's really dynamic, but it's also really rooted in tradition and in history. And as we talk about that, you have a project or an artistic movement, I don't know how to call it, but which is called Own Your Roots. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #1
Well, like, bravo to you, because whatever you just described makes me really happy because it means that, I mean, although pretty much from the moment you saw my works, they were all under Own Your Roots and whatever you described. like really perfectly describes like what i'm trying to do with the project so yay that's a good encouragement to myself um it's a project that really first started off as a multimedia project in my mind it was not going to be limited to photography or just video but i didn't know how big it could be until i think ai came in and i think i also had even more ideas that like for what it could become but at the very root of it it is about bringing traditions to the future that's It's called Own Your Roots. where I feel like it's quite interesting. I started getting very interested in traditions of the whole world actually, not just the Asian stuff. Let's say four years back and then I could also see that it's another kind of passing on, how do you say that? It mentioned it's 傳承 but in English it would be just the passing down from my parents because there was one day some light bulb just went off and I realised that oh, my parents are really interested in traditional things. But they, at the same time, both of them are in the creative field. And they both are very, very modern people. Very hip, very well-dressed and just coolest. One of the coolest, two of the coolest people I ever knew. Shout out to them.
Speaker #0
Shout out to them.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And then I saw how much I got interested in these things. And ever since I was young, I just didn't realise it. So the more I dug into it, because the idea was to how I could bring traditional things from all over the world. into the future, not just modernity, but into the future using my language, because it's just at that time photography and film. The more I dug into the traditions of the world, the more I realized that, huh, I thought that it would be very, like, the more I go deeper in, the more... different it would be because we're all so different right there are different cultures in in the world but yet the deeper i went into different cultures the more i realized that we had so much things in sync like there were so many similarities between the cultures the ancient cultures when you go back really really deep so in fact it kind of went back to this you can say it's cheesy but it's true which is we are really all one human and one world
Speaker #0
I don't think it's cheesy at all. And it's true that when you really dig into cultures, into history, you realize how many things are connected and that, well, humans are really one big species and that we tend to do things the same way, even if we express it differently, of course, and with a lot of nuances. But yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think your work really pays a good homage to all that.
Speaker #1
Thank you. I mean, so now you see a lot of Asian traditions in it because I had to start somewhere where I was most familiar with. But the goal is definitely not to just stay with the Asian cultures. And in fact, just adding on to this thing about the one world, me and my, one of my bestest, like, I call him like my little brother because he's really like a little brother. And he's based in, he's a cinematographer based in India. And we have this thing where we say that our grandfathers are basically just brothers. And then they just set off on different boats. So one ended up in Singapore and one ended up in India. That's why we became different. But. At the heart of it, there's so many things that are so similar between us. I love for this project to be able to explore all these things that are very old-fashioned. At one point in time, I wanted to really do a lot of kitschy stuff. And all the old-fashioned things that you think are just out of date and irrelevant. I wanted to bring that back because I always thought there's a lot of very wise wisdom in all these things that are old and ancient. And then just how to bring it to the now but not...
Speaker #0
just to the now but to the future yes okay so that's the the project really yeah that's really cool and uh what's the next steps for a project basically because uh i know that you have exhibitions so in asia i think in singapore uh
Speaker #1
in europe too in paris maybe soon so there's a great place to go on is there something that you can tell us for you know for for this year yes it was not for this year but the prep is going on so When I was saying that at the beginning it was a multimedia project, it quickly evolved into me realizing that it has to be, it could definitely be, and I wanted it to be way bigger, so into like exhibition, immersive space, and maybe even a community and a movement at one point of time. And so we had two shows in the United States already back, was it just this year? The time has flown just so fast. I think it was in June, yeah, it was in June this year. I had a show in LA and I had a show in San Francisco, yes. And then right now, what's going to be exciting is that we just got news that the next show is going to be locked in for next year, September. So that's what we're going to prep for now. And also what is interesting to kind of tease about this is that as I went along the path, remember when I first, I said that like at the start, I think it was about traditional things but there's so many things that are traditional right everything has something that is traditional in this world but what exactly of traditions do i want to touch on and there was this one thing that i realized i kept going back into um or rather kept piquing my interest even when i was a really young kid and that went into things to do with death life and spirituality and so i'm also very actively working on i mean this this turned out to be these very specific path that I want to go down on to explore and maybe even think about. Let's say we live in a world, this is something I talked to you about, I think the last time we met, like we live in a world where more and more people start to say that they're spiritual, but they're not religious. And then you realize that, aha, but what, why do they try and kind of segregate, like, you know, differentiate themselves from religious when at the heart of both of these things. It's just this thing of spirituality. So they just don't want to subscribe to like, let's say, a certain fact, or how do you call it, like certain tribe of religions, of certain laws and rules or ways of being. But at the same time, they're all really just, I mean, I think, as humans, it's very hard to not be interested in the truth inside of yourself. Yes, you can avoid it, you can run away from it, maybe you can... escape successfully your entire life about it, but there will always be a voice inside of you. And that's what makes a lot of people empty, I think, even when they have everything in the world. If they never spend time or the resources to commit to themselves and find out the truth inside of themselves. it will always be clawing and niggling at them. And then my question to myself is that in today's world, then with everything going so fast and then you have things that are changing, you know, I mean, the way AI develops, like every single second something changes. Like I have an impression that, you know, I got into also the NFT world and the crypto world around the same time I was analysing these AI things. And you just feel like every morning you wake up and like the world has like evolved a certain way. In this crazy world, what then is the new spiritual temple for people like us, maybe who don't subscribe necessarily to any religion, but definitely are on the path to seek certain truths or try to figure out this world? And so that is my question to myself. And with all that being said, it's just to link back to what's going to happen next year in September. We're going to work with a temple to bring an exhibition, but not just your traditional painting on the wall. art on the wall exhibition but really something that is well i have this thing about the word immersive because i feel like it's used so much like people just they put a projector or three projectors or four projectors on the wall and they call it immersive but i really want to make it into an experience that people can walk into and immersive is a great word but i think i would look to explore how to make immersive really even more immersive than just the technical putting a few projectors in a room yeah
Speaker #0
We were talking about how you blend tradition with modernity, with technology. So one of your latest work is inspired from an ancient Chinese work that you told me about, which is, I think, a work by Liao Zai of specialties of a Chinese studio, if I remember well.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the English translation is the special tales of a
Speaker #0
Chinese studio.
Speaker #1
I think in French it's what? they can't Contes et étranges? No, no, extraordinaire.
Speaker #0
Les contes extraordinaires. Oui, de Laotai. So I don't know much about that. I've read a little bit about it, but I'm no expert, obviously. So can you tell us first a little bit about these tales, the importance they have in Chinese culture, and then your project, the movie you actually directed about that, Bébé Aïe?
Speaker #1
So this piece of... tale which is maybe not as famous outside of China yet than you know a story like Sun Wukong the Monkey King especially now with like black myth and everything coming out it has taken over the world but it's a very important piece of classic literature for let's say the Asian community and you would find like not the exact same stories but you would see that in a lot of Asian cultures we use the ghost to tell a lot of different stories and then this particular story of Liao Chai it's actually a collection of many many short stories And most of them, I mean, pretty much the formula, it's about like a ghost, a female ghost, falling in love with this male scholar who is, you know, trying to do his studies, but then this beautiful woman just comes and takes his soul away. But the irony is that I think a lot of times, these monsters and ghosts, who are supposed to be the evil ones, are the ones that, let's say, sacrifice themselves for the human, because the human in the end gets selfish, and, you know, the humans are written to reflect. all the not-so-good parts in us, basically. And then yet the ghosts that are supposed to be the more evil ones are the ones that sacrifice themselves for pure love, true love kind of thing. And so it's a very important story because, as with all classics that can last the test of time, it's supposed to be a collection of love stories, but in the end, it's really a commentary on society, it's a commentary on mankind. on our relationships with each other. And so it's something that explores very deep into the abyss of us, really.
Speaker #0
Yeah, we use basically the extraordinary to talk about really mundane things. It's a great way, actually, to point out our maybe shortcomings and human nature.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And for me, just you pointing out brilliantly on that word links us back to the beginning, which is this truth that we're seeking for. We always say in art, and I forgot totally the phrase, I'm not going to even try, but it is really about using the non-truth to speak about the truth. It's like we have to build up so many things that are not true only to be able to find the truth. So exactly that, using the extraordinary. To talk about mundane things, I think this is pretty much what art is, a lot of art is about.
Speaker #0
yeah right it's like we tend to say that good science fiction uh is oh yeah of you know modern days for instance you see that with uh in in in the 80s you had a lot of cyberpunk stories which was basically a criticism of uh well big corporations technology uh capitalism and all that something that is really well uh on sports actually with the world we live in nowadays but it can be the same with more extraordinary things with ghosts with you know fantastic stories too.
Speaker #1
Exactly you can just consider I just sorry the phrase just came out of my mind which is you can just consider artists as people who know how to like fight or scold people smartly because we don't we don't criticize them outright we don't go to the stage like you know we just we we have our activism and we we like stand up for what we believe in.
Speaker #0
but through our art and with craft i think that's what the beautiful thing about being an artist yeah well i think i think good art in general whatever it is you know whether it's music visual arts whatever makes you think makes you reflect maybe on who you are where you live what you do and uh well that's basically what you what you do with your latest space so inspired by yeah Lea Ojai and so these fantastic tales and So basically, what's your film about? How did you bring that to life? Can you tell us a bit more?
Speaker #1
I'll tell you about it. The craziest part was how it kind of happened, really. So what happened was that it was a period of time, let's say a few months ago, where I was really creating like crazy. I was just doing, doing, doing. Because the act of doing is already in itself something that is worth itself, right? So without knowing how I was going to use it. Or even till now, like there's a lot of things that I do, which I don't know how it's going to be used or what it is for. But the act of doing it is that important. So I just do it. But then I was in a period of time where I was feeling a bit lost because I had no idea where to bring it to. And then one day, like this piece of music. So the music came first. And it's by this brilliant composer that's so young. He's in like early 20s, based in Beijing. He's a really great composer. And I heard his track. It just came onto my path like the universe just sent it. to me and shit like immediately when i heard the track like the visual started flying out and i was just like oh my god like this is i have to do something about it because when i got the track it was just really a reference like sent to me as just okay check it out like tell me what you think and that was that uh but immediately when i heard the music and this is my relationship also to music i think because uh it's funny like when i was a film student at one point in time A teacher actually said that, no, music is, I don't know, I don't know what. It was quite a stupid thing because I didn't agree, but like if you're just saying something about how music is just a very tiny part of film. But I knew at that time, despite me, I used to be a student who was very like, afraid of hierarchy. I said I was very like, wanted to be a good student, wanted to be praised by teachers. But there was one time I knew so deep in my core that no, like music is not like the last part that you should think about. Music is like 50% at least of the film for me. And so this is my relationship to music. And so that's why when this piece of music came, I was like, yeah, this is the calling. And I also was always very interested in the story of Liao Chai. I just didn't know what to do with it because it's such a famous story. So much dramas, TV shows, movies have been done on it again and again. I grew up watching series as well, this Chinese literature. And so I didn't know what I could do with it. But then when that piece of music came, I was like, yeah. And so what's fascinating is that the music itself, the composer had his own intention, which is in Liao Zhai, something that is explored is also the san xing, which is the three natures of humankind. One is the good, the evil, and then the neutral. So this is the things that they are exploring, one of the themes that they explore inside all these stories. And so his music track was really based off this. these three things, how to bring out these three things. And then for me, I had to kind of take a seat back and because there were so much things I could do about it, like Liao Chai has so many different visual elements. I mean, it's a collection of short stories in the first place. So which story do I choose? Where do I start from? Where do I go to?
Speaker #0
So yeah, how many stories are there in total?
Speaker #1
It's a bad question to ask because I don't know the answer. We can Google. so we can we can edit it uh google is it is it i don't know thousands of stories hundreds of stories no i think it's a good can i like a number popped in my mind but it's very not scientific but i like i saw the number 96 but 96. it's a pretty decent volume yeah I'll be honest, I didn't fit in the book.
Speaker #0
That's okay.
Speaker #1
But that's the thing.
Speaker #0
We won't tell anyone. And how many did you use for your film?
Speaker #1
Yeah see, I'm going... That's what I exactly was trying to say, which is, when there's so many stories, for me there was just no way of like going like... I just didn't have the patience that I go through like every single story. But I really sat back and asked myself what the story brought me in, in whole what was the first thing that I got. And of course...
Speaker #0
The very first thing was love, right? But what about love? Because there was all kinds of love in there. There's love that crosses not just gender, but like species or whatever, dimensions. But what is it about love that I can take away? And then I realised that it is, at the crux of it, at the core of it, it's about how in every relationship that we go into, all the pain that you feel, or the joy or the love, yes, it's triggered by the other person because without the other person there, you can't really just feel these things for yourself. But at the end of the day, all the relationships are just a battle between you and you. Because everything that you're reacting to, when your partner triggers something to you, it happens because of you, not because of your partner. Because when this partner goes, if you realize, then the next partner, if you didn't heal those wounds yet, or whatever you're dealing with inside, the monsters that you're dealing with inside, the next one, you react the same way. So it's your demons in your heart.
Speaker #1
It's all about perception and how you... how you react to things and what triggers you and what
Speaker #0
I don't know what makes who you are basically it's definitely perception but I would go that's why the story in the end is called my film is called demons in the heart because I mean it's a period of time where I was really going through a lot of demons in my heart because you have to face all the shadows inside of yourself and being a relationship is what brings it out so it's not so much about as in love is great because it helps you realize all the things inside of yourself that you might want to fix or not want to fix but you know at least it brings out all the demons but it's that every relationship that you go in i think if people have gone through difficult relationships it's you cannot blame the other person for it basically there's nothing to be blamed um
Speaker #1
on the other person everything's on yourself that was what i was exploring through this film and how much time did it take to uh because i saw i saw the film and it's uh it's pretty great i must say so i was wondering uh how much time did you spend from you know the inception of the idea yeah well let's do something with uh yaojai work and uh at the moment it was released how much time will you think that i i don't know it's hard to say but uh i think i i suspect there was a lot of work put in it uh so i would say i don't know six months one year something like that oh that's quite beautiful here
Speaker #0
I mean, there was a lot of work put into it. I think my eyesight went... I always say each project makes my eyes like a bit blinder than before. Because you guys don't know how much... Like people like us, I mean, all the ones in our industry, the amount of time we have to stare at the screen is really something else. But it took me two weeks to do this. But I would say it was a... This was not a normal two weeks of like, oh okay I'll go about my life and then I do two weeks. It was really like I took a retreat, like I didn't see any humans. I closed myself off in my own home and I basically just did nothing but edited and made, created and edited and created and edited. There was full on two weeks for the first part of it and then because I was heading to Beijing and I wanted to meet the composer too and then after that when I came back from the trip, but then I took a let's say one month break in between and then when I came back i took another few days to um make it into the version that you see today but like sometimes i don't like to say the time because people would say it again that like ai takes three seconds to make which i can tell you is really not true i was i was actually thinking about uh so funny all the inception of the project so the first time
Speaker #1
you had the idea to yeah work with the language eyes work then uh move to let's say i don't know write a storyboard or write the story, find the composer and all that. So two weeks is, I think it's two weeks.
Speaker #0
You have to understand that when I, I think the last time someone asked me how long it took for me to do a piece of work, a particular piece of work, I told them like my entire life. Because every single piece...
Speaker #1
That's a great answer.
Speaker #0
Because every single piece would not have happened if, like I could do this in two weeks. Because before that, I already had years and years. I've been in the industry of like film for what? 10 over years like i look young like i've been like i think 12 years officially the last time i counted so i've been like a professional in the industry for quite a while and so these are skills that i've done like to be able to like you know think while i'm moving along the road or whatever i'll prepare like i said i was also interested in leo zhai since i was a kid and i just like everything accumulated out to this point of time where i could do it like that. And so I am, yeah, I always, I always feel like It's not so fair to measure the amount of time taken. I mean, it's great for discussion, but it's very different one person's two weeks to somebody else's two weeks. Because the amount of things you do in like that two weeks, I think it's very different. But yeah, so I think the pieces of work, especially using AI, Specifically because AI is so, you know, funny thing is it's so free. You can do literally what you want. So it's actually your previous experience that's gonna be able to limit you to, like, I never used AI to churn out easily things. I used AI to do things that I cannot do in real life. That's how I use AI. And so it was very about being disciplined into looking for my specific way of using AI rather than just use AI because it's... Easy quotation marks.
Speaker #1
I think that's a really important thing. Because for a lot of people who are critical of AI, and you have a right to be, they will tell you sometimes that AI makes things easier and that you can save on costs, save on time, and that you don't need talent actually to use it, that you can do pretty much anything you want. And it's not true, or it is true, but just to an extent, to an extent because I think you need to have a vision. I think you need to be experienced in arts, basically. You're a photographer, you're a filmmaker, before being an AI artist. And I think that makes the whole difference, because I think if I try to make an AI movie, well, it may not be that good. Because I don't have the training beforehand. I could learn, but it will take time. So what I mean is that it's not the shortcut that some people think it is. It's like special effects, basically. And I like when you say that AI helps you to do things that you couldn't do otherwise. It's like, you know, in Hollywood movies, for instance, well, you use special effects because, well, you cannot have Godzilla, you know, walking in a city in New York, something like that. So, yeah, actually you use special effects and it's the same with AI. But what I like about it is that it enables more people to actually express what they have in mind. to become maybe filmmakers or more ambitious filmmakers because they don't, well, not everybody has the budget to, you know, actually create real special effects. So AI is here to help.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and it's funny, I think, you know what, the people who say that AI doesn't need talent to make, as in there was a conversation about how artists feel like people feel like they might be losing their jobs to AI because you know people like other people just use it produce something but i'll tell you that the people who use ai to just just produce something they are the ones who never respected artists in the first place okay because they were the ones they would be the ones that pay artists the least possible to get whatever because i just need something simple uh don't even you know it's kind of they are the ones in the original place who would not has have appreciated that or understood i mean it's not their fault right because there's a lot of things i don't understand about engineering so I can't blame somebody else. let's say in the business world who doesn't understand my art process, it's fair. But at the same time, I'm just trying to say that it's very unfair to just push down AI because the mess discussion, like it actually gets a bit tiring because I'm just waiting. I know that one day it would be accepted just like how photography took time to become an art form. Like photography must have at that time felt like it would destroy all painters' life. But no, now painters are working with... photography angles to do something that photography can't do. So it would not kill something else. Um, uh, the advent of type, I always go back to this example, which is when typewriters, no, sorry, when the computers were involved, uh, uh, what? Uh, invented typewriters had to go away, but like it's, it's, it's not so much the, it's so unfair to say that like, let's just not have computers then, no? Who would take a typewriter over a computer?
Speaker #1
Yeah, I think, I think that's, um. That's a relevant example. It's just like, so photography didn't kill painting. Cinema didn't kill photography. AI won't kill cinema. Things might be different. That's true. But it's just a new tool, you know, that is available to creators. And I think this is why I think it's great. And this is why I don't think creators are that threatened. Of course, there are copyright issues and things that need to be addressed. But I think at the end of the day, If you're talented, if you want to create, if you know how to use it, and if you're trained in using AI tools, you have the opportunity to do great things.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and just for the copyright issue, as in just because this is something I just want to put it out there. And I'm wondering what kind of conversations this might spark. But for me, when I was thinking for myself, how do I feel about this copywriting? Because it's true that AI was trained on a lot of people who didn't give any. what permission at all. But then at one point in time, I realized that this was coming from a lot of fear, right? Because it is very true that, let's say, an illustrator who spent 10 years trying to find their own style, like... mad heads respect down to them because they had to spend all those time to find their own thing and then now suddenly i can find their style in let's say a few minutes no with training yes you need to take a few days to train whatever okay but um it is it is very scary i think to think of it that way but at the same time if we think about it in like if we can go out of ourselves as individuals and our own gains um and we realize that the world is abundant enough and then we think about how we as a human being in this world can help this world become better or like just more beautiful a place, then maybe all of us who have been trained, who has been used in the training of the AI are contributing to this much more beautiful world where, you know, we're contributing to something that can advance things, right? Like how Van Gogh is not going to come and scream at you for copying his art. Like, you know, we all learn a lot of artists. we have to start by copying like because we start by learning the techniques that somebody else invented at one point of time but how are we not why are we not crying over us you know learning van gogh's art style or like monet's art style or whatever because this is just part of us learning from our ancestors actually really so this
Speaker #1
is for me what ai is so i i agree with that the fact that we as artists as creators uh let's say everybody steals from everybody or get inspired, whatever.
Speaker #0
Learn from each other,
Speaker #1
really. To call it. But at some point, you also need to reinvent the business model, maybe. How artists make a living, basically. Because it can threaten some of them as it makes things more available, more widely available. Yes. But that's a conversation in itself. It's interesting to have your vision of that. So about... Bye bye. AI again, what advice would you give to creators that haven't jumped on the train of AI? What's the secret sauce basically to make AI work for you as a creator?
Speaker #0
Oh, secret sauce? Okay, wait, there are two different questions. I don't know, the advice is more like before you say anything else, honestly, just try it. Spend five minutes if you want. Spend one day if you want and then you can make your own decisions about it because I think it might not be for everyone. I think people would do much better things than AI. There are a lot of things that I can't do with AI that I can do with a real world tool. So like please do not, you don't have to go into it. But I think it would be very unfair to say that you don't like it or you hate it or you don't like it's useless without even trying. It's like saying that dish is like so not tasty. Like I would never touch that dish without even trying. I think that's not so fair, right? So that's my thing. Secret sauce making AI work. I think it's still this, like you have to remember that it is still more about, at the end of the day, do you want people to know you as someone who can generate AI very well? That's one way to look at it because just like how we have very strong technicians, sound technicians that I would never be able to do a job of. They are very skilled in their skill set of technical things, right? You can become a very skilled AI technician. But then do you want to be an artist? In a sense where you have your own universe, so your own things to say. That AI can't help you unfortunately. Like ChatGPT can help you like regularise like what you want to say and find some, what is that, order or like structure to it, but it cannot invent what means a lot to you. It cannot invent your wounds, it cannot invent like your past. And so you have to go and deal with all these things and find out what is it you want to use AI to create. I think that is the... Only way AI can also have a better universe because if more and more people use it, not as a cheap, fast tool to do whatever simple stuff and companies use it to save on graphic designers. Yeah, we can just AI it. That would be quite disastrous because then, yes, AI would just be reputated to be known for this. But the more I really believe, the more people with their own minds, with their own universe, with their own things that they really need to say, come along and use AI, that's when AI would.
Speaker #1
start to flourish that's my take and that's a great one and that's a great way i think to end it thank you very much for sharing your vision uh where can we find you online uh you do have a website an instagram account where can we follow your work instagram would be great so it'll be on own your roots would be nice um it's own o-w-n-y-o-u-r
Speaker #0
dot Puan, R-O-O-T-S. So own your roots. And then my own personal account is Zoe and Zoe, like Z-O-E-A-N-D and then Z-O.
Speaker #1
Okay, so all that on Instagram?
Speaker #0
Yeah, Instagram is the best way. Like I can barely manage Instagram. I can't do other socials right now.
Speaker #1
Okay, that's great. Well, thanks a lot, Zo, and hope to see you again soon.
Speaker #0
Me too.

Chapters

Introduction
0sec
How Zo got into photography and filmmaking
39sec
AI integration in the creative process
2min
The relationship between AI and photography
5min
AI as a creative partner
8min
Combining tradition with modernity
11min
Inspiration from Liao Zhai
21min
The making of Zo’s new film
25min
Artistry, AI and copyrights
35min
Zo’s Secret Sauce
41min
Conclusion
44min

Description

Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Transcription

Speaker #0
so let's go yes hi zo hi julian it's nice to have you on the podcast really happy because it's been a while since we've been discussing this interview so welcome
Speaker #1
yes thank you hi julian and friends on the podcast can you can you say a few words in french i know you speak french Ah oui, yes. De quoi? On parle quoi? Je m'appelle Zo. I'm a friend of Julien's and hello to all Julien's friends who are listening to this podcast.
Speaker #0
Great, thank you. So Zoe, you're a visual artist, a director and a photographer. So could you tell us what brings you to photography, then to directing films and now being an AI artist?
Speaker #1
Like the long version or the short version?
Speaker #0
As you like. The long version would be good.
Speaker #1
Yeah? Okay, wait. Just a really fun part, I mean, starting with the first bit of the question, how I got into photography was really because I think I somehow always had a camera in my hand when I was a kid. When I was really, really young, I was always in front of a camera. I somehow loved to be photographed, which I quickly grew out of, I think at around five years old. Then I started holding the camera a lot without even knowing what I was really doing. And then when I think I was in primary school, which is about like eight, ten years old. Is that it? My dad had... the DSLR camera and this was at a time where there were very little like it was just out right the DSLR cameras and I he didn't use it so I just quotation marks stole it from him and use it all the time and then I think the the idea of becoming a photographer really came in high school when I had to choose like my discipline whether I my major for my high school because I chose like a special high school where you could specialize in a tech like technical thing instead of studying math and the boring science stuff. So it was down to business or cinema. And that was when I did a very hard choice of choosing cinema because at that time I didn't know, like how would you know what you want to do in 10 years if you didn't even know what you want to do in 10 days kind of thing, you know, at 16. But you know what, I made the choice and the rest is history. So for me, I went straight into cinema and photography was always a thing that was in tandem, like it was exactly the same. process even though it's very different cinema and photography but they always meant like very complementary things to me so i couldn't have done one without the other and then now moving on to ai is that it yes how do you integrate ai in your creative process and uh how did you how were you introduced to ai basically so it's quite for me it's quite a beautiful story because i've started my personal project called own your roots since 2019 and at the beginning it was really about doing a lot of things manually. So I would do photo shoots, I would do music videos and a lot of shoots for this project where I want to bring the traditional to the future. But because of the resources, because of the sheer amount of time it needs to make one single shoot happen, I end up only doing maybe one per year because I have other work going on. And also just if you think about it, the amount of time is required. to it's not just about the budget it's just about finding a team that could see your vision before it existed and because i was trying to do things that were really out of the world right so just to be able to find a team to work on a shoot together to cover i don't know location styling makeup the model the storytelling the editing because i do my quite a lot of editing on my personal project photos um it was just it's just a lot right and then AI came into play. And at first, I was really like all the other creatives. Like, oh, no, number one is going to steal all our jaws. It's so scary. Like, what is it? Blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I think everything changed when I really just jumped into it. So it can only, the relationship can only happen when you actually stop observing it and start using it. And then I went through so many different tools in AI because AI is like two letters. But it encompasses so much things. And that was when I realized that it has... become really my, something like the third camera in my tool set, because it's not just something that I use to make my life easier. Sure, like now I have literally no excuse between what is in my mind and in what I put out, because the only thing that's stopping myself back is myself. It ends up, I cannot blame having not enough budget or not enough location, not enough team, not enough time. I can't do that. And it's just me and my, the hard work that I put in to Use AI as this camera that can help me shoot things that my first two cameras cannot in the real life. Yeah, so that's the story.
Speaker #0
So yeah, it helps you save time, save money and do more things on your own.
Speaker #1
I think it definitely helps me save. Sorry, just to jump in. It definitely helps me do more things on my own, which I would have done also anyway. But I'm not sure if the time is... I mean, sure, in comparison to a human thing where you need a year to do one stuff, of course, now it's a lot of time. But I would tell, because I am a huge advocate for this, like, it does not... I don't spend less time doing AI. In fact, I spend much, much more time. put like just throwing myself into all the creations that i use because it takes so much time to do something that you really can own as like your own work and how do you um let's say uh balance ai with photography or
Speaker #0
with uh traditional you know uh video shooting because we tend to say if going back to photography we tend to say that Photography captures the truth, but AI can manipulate it. And we see that almost every day nowadays. So how do you reconcile the two? How do you find the right balance as an artist?
Speaker #1
I thought it was a very beautiful thing, your question of like, so in photography, you're chasing for the truth.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you know, you capture the instant. That's what we tend to say, that it's the truth of a single image. But with AI, you can, you know, you have deep fakes, you can alter perception, you can alter the truth, basically, because you can have, I don't know, a blue dog walking on water, or you can do pretty much anything, which is fantastic for so many reasons. But there's also some kind of fakeness in AI. So I wonder, as an artist, how you see that? Do Do you see that as an opportunity or do you think there are there's a need for rules to actually find the right balance.
Speaker #1
I think it's funny because I think balance is exactly this one word that I never really see in my own works because let's just pull that question back again. Your example of the blue dog floating on water, something like this, what is it? Technically, if you think about it, can photography do that? Yes, absolutely. You know what I'm saying? With Photoshop, even without Photoshop, yes, you have to erase a little bit of lines even if you hang the dog in mid-space in real life. There's a lot of things you can do. Yes, of course. I don't think it's just photography. Like all arts, every creator is out there to seek some kind of truth, whether it's a truth that's in themselves or a truth that they want to understand about this universe. I think that doesn't change if you're a creator that's very genuine about wanting to put something out there that means something to yourself. You have to seek for a truth. But... that means that in the end of the day, whether it's AI or whether it's photography, it's really up to the person who uses it. Because for example, for me, I wouldn't say never say never, right? But I don't think I'll ever use AI to do deep fakes because that's just not what I want to do. But yet at the same time, someone could do deep fake as in, you know, with other methods other than AI. But sure, we can, you know, put it at that. So that's why I think to sum it up, for me, if it's never already, like it was never really about balance. It's more about using what I have to express what I want to express inside. And AI came along as a very helpful partner to do that. And so I always believe that it's more about the person with everything. And this could be interesting to segue into when I was telling you, I think the last time we met, how I realized that AI is, for me, is almost a tool or is a tool for me to find myself.
Speaker #0
You see AI as a partner. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Because that's really interesting. It's not a tool for you. It's more than that.
Speaker #1
Oh yeah. I think from the very early on, I think I was talking to a friend about this. And this was the very early stages of me using AI. I really felt like it was... Yeah, okay, sorry. I was just thinking through my own process. Back then, even while I was using an AI that was giving me very... shitty reasons. As in, just very basic. It was just the start of me exploring AI and I didn't have so much mastery over it yet. But I had this very keen sense of how I was almost like speaking to the AI. So yeah, sure, people feel like they're speaking to ChatGP because that's what ChatGP is engineered to to make us feel like, right? But even when I'm entering prompts into AI because I used it, when I throw myself, I throw myself into something, I throw myself into something. That's why I say balance is never really a word for me. But so when I first threw myself into it, I could see how the machine or the information or the data set, if you would call it, the crux of it, reacted to all the prompts. And so it's like the more I got to know it, it's just like a friend, right? The more I got to know it, the more I know how to speak to this friend. Like what kind of words could come up with more interesting conversations with this friend. And yeah, I was just really conversing with it without. um you know what i'm saying it's not about asking how are you today or what do you just eat but really seeing what the this friend reacted or gave me in exchange for what i put in that that made me feel like it was a real like it was really something more than just uh i tell you what to do and then you just give that to me kind of thing because i could see i could feel the machine kind of changing as I used it.
Speaker #0
It's a conversation. So this is why you were saying that it saves you time, but maybe not that much time because you also spend a lot of time talking to the program, to the machine and to see the conversation evolve and what kind of creation it can bring.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #0
When did you start experimenting with AI? Right in the beginning when it was released, when we had access to, I don't know, Midjourney, Runway, these kind of tools?
Speaker #1
I think I got into AI, the very serious time was probably around 2022. Like that was when I really started using it in almost daily life creating kind of thing. I even took a transition year in between to, I mean so the last two years were really kind of, this year and last year were really kind of transition years where I took time off my other commission commercial work to really focus on my personal project. So that's the main time that I spent with AI really.
Speaker #0
If we go back to the beginning of your career as an artist, you started as a photographer. Then you moved to directing films. Now you use AI in your whole creative process. So is there, let's say, a word or a way to define who you are as an artist?
Speaker #1
constantly evolving and it doesn't apply to you it's an interesting question but it might be more interesting answered by you like from your perspective when you see my works right it doesn't matter whether it's the early ones or let's just say whatever you've seen so far which is probably more the ai stuff what
Speaker #0
would you call what will you define my style as like so it's a good question in it so i don't i don't know all your work yeah and it's true that most of what i'm familiar with this VIA stuff. But I would say that there's some kind of It's a combination of tradition and modernity. You really bring, let's say, traditional Asian myths and legends, and we will talk about that with the latest technology that enables it to, let's say, to shine or to be experienced in a new way. And this is what I like. It's really colorful, it's really dynamic, but it's also really rooted in tradition and in history. And as we talk about that, you have a project or an artistic movement, I don't know how to call it, but which is called Own Your Roots. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #1
Well, like, bravo to you, because whatever you just described makes me really happy because it means that, I mean, although pretty much from the moment you saw my works, they were all under Own Your Roots and whatever you described. like really perfectly describes like what i'm trying to do with the project so yay that's a good encouragement to myself um it's a project that really first started off as a multimedia project in my mind it was not going to be limited to photography or just video but i didn't know how big it could be until i think ai came in and i think i also had even more ideas that like for what it could become but at the very root of it it is about bringing traditions to the future that's It's called Own Your Roots. where I feel like it's quite interesting. I started getting very interested in traditions of the whole world actually, not just the Asian stuff. Let's say four years back and then I could also see that it's another kind of passing on, how do you say that? It mentioned it's 傳承 but in English it would be just the passing down from my parents because there was one day some light bulb just went off and I realised that oh, my parents are really interested in traditional things. But they, at the same time, both of them are in the creative field. And they both are very, very modern people. Very hip, very well-dressed and just coolest. One of the coolest, two of the coolest people I ever knew. Shout out to them.
Speaker #0
Shout out to them.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And then I saw how much I got interested in these things. And ever since I was young, I just didn't realise it. So the more I dug into it, because the idea was to how I could bring traditional things from all over the world. into the future, not just modernity, but into the future using my language, because it's just at that time photography and film. The more I dug into the traditions of the world, the more I realized that, huh, I thought that it would be very, like, the more I go deeper in, the more... different it would be because we're all so different right there are different cultures in in the world but yet the deeper i went into different cultures the more i realized that we had so much things in sync like there were so many similarities between the cultures the ancient cultures when you go back really really deep so in fact it kind of went back to this you can say it's cheesy but it's true which is we are really all one human and one world
Speaker #0
I don't think it's cheesy at all. And it's true that when you really dig into cultures, into history, you realize how many things are connected and that, well, humans are really one big species and that we tend to do things the same way, even if we express it differently, of course, and with a lot of nuances. But yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think your work really pays a good homage to all that.
Speaker #1
Thank you. I mean, so now you see a lot of Asian traditions in it because I had to start somewhere where I was most familiar with. But the goal is definitely not to just stay with the Asian cultures. And in fact, just adding on to this thing about the one world, me and my, one of my bestest, like, I call him like my little brother because he's really like a little brother. And he's based in, he's a cinematographer based in India. And we have this thing where we say that our grandfathers are basically just brothers. And then they just set off on different boats. So one ended up in Singapore and one ended up in India. That's why we became different. But. At the heart of it, there's so many things that are so similar between us. I love for this project to be able to explore all these things that are very old-fashioned. At one point in time, I wanted to really do a lot of kitschy stuff. And all the old-fashioned things that you think are just out of date and irrelevant. I wanted to bring that back because I always thought there's a lot of very wise wisdom in all these things that are old and ancient. And then just how to bring it to the now but not...
Speaker #0
just to the now but to the future yes okay so that's the the project really yeah that's really cool and uh what's the next steps for a project basically because uh i know that you have exhibitions so in asia i think in singapore uh
Speaker #1
in europe too in paris maybe soon so there's a great place to go on is there something that you can tell us for you know for for this year yes it was not for this year but the prep is going on so When I was saying that at the beginning it was a multimedia project, it quickly evolved into me realizing that it has to be, it could definitely be, and I wanted it to be way bigger, so into like exhibition, immersive space, and maybe even a community and a movement at one point of time. And so we had two shows in the United States already back, was it just this year? The time has flown just so fast. I think it was in June, yeah, it was in June this year. I had a show in LA and I had a show in San Francisco, yes. And then right now, what's going to be exciting is that we just got news that the next show is going to be locked in for next year, September. So that's what we're going to prep for now. And also what is interesting to kind of tease about this is that as I went along the path, remember when I first, I said that like at the start, I think it was about traditional things but there's so many things that are traditional right everything has something that is traditional in this world but what exactly of traditions do i want to touch on and there was this one thing that i realized i kept going back into um or rather kept piquing my interest even when i was a really young kid and that went into things to do with death life and spirituality and so i'm also very actively working on i mean this this turned out to be these very specific path that I want to go down on to explore and maybe even think about. Let's say we live in a world, this is something I talked to you about, I think the last time we met, like we live in a world where more and more people start to say that they're spiritual, but they're not religious. And then you realize that, aha, but what, why do they try and kind of segregate, like, you know, differentiate themselves from religious when at the heart of both of these things. It's just this thing of spirituality. So they just don't want to subscribe to like, let's say, a certain fact, or how do you call it, like certain tribe of religions, of certain laws and rules or ways of being. But at the same time, they're all really just, I mean, I think, as humans, it's very hard to not be interested in the truth inside of yourself. Yes, you can avoid it, you can run away from it, maybe you can... escape successfully your entire life about it, but there will always be a voice inside of you. And that's what makes a lot of people empty, I think, even when they have everything in the world. If they never spend time or the resources to commit to themselves and find out the truth inside of themselves. it will always be clawing and niggling at them. And then my question to myself is that in today's world, then with everything going so fast and then you have things that are changing, you know, I mean, the way AI develops, like every single second something changes. Like I have an impression that, you know, I got into also the NFT world and the crypto world around the same time I was analysing these AI things. And you just feel like every morning you wake up and like the world has like evolved a certain way. In this crazy world, what then is the new spiritual temple for people like us, maybe who don't subscribe necessarily to any religion, but definitely are on the path to seek certain truths or try to figure out this world? And so that is my question to myself. And with all that being said, it's just to link back to what's going to happen next year in September. We're going to work with a temple to bring an exhibition, but not just your traditional painting on the wall. art on the wall exhibition but really something that is well i have this thing about the word immersive because i feel like it's used so much like people just they put a projector or three projectors or four projectors on the wall and they call it immersive but i really want to make it into an experience that people can walk into and immersive is a great word but i think i would look to explore how to make immersive really even more immersive than just the technical putting a few projectors in a room yeah
Speaker #0
We were talking about how you blend tradition with modernity, with technology. So one of your latest work is inspired from an ancient Chinese work that you told me about, which is, I think, a work by Liao Zai of specialties of a Chinese studio, if I remember well.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the English translation is the special tales of a
Speaker #0
Chinese studio.
Speaker #1
I think in French it's what? they can't Contes et étranges? No, no, extraordinaire.
Speaker #0
Les contes extraordinaires. Oui, de Laotai. So I don't know much about that. I've read a little bit about it, but I'm no expert, obviously. So can you tell us first a little bit about these tales, the importance they have in Chinese culture, and then your project, the movie you actually directed about that, Bébé Aïe?
Speaker #1
So this piece of... tale which is maybe not as famous outside of China yet than you know a story like Sun Wukong the Monkey King especially now with like black myth and everything coming out it has taken over the world but it's a very important piece of classic literature for let's say the Asian community and you would find like not the exact same stories but you would see that in a lot of Asian cultures we use the ghost to tell a lot of different stories and then this particular story of Liao Chai it's actually a collection of many many short stories And most of them, I mean, pretty much the formula, it's about like a ghost, a female ghost, falling in love with this male scholar who is, you know, trying to do his studies, but then this beautiful woman just comes and takes his soul away. But the irony is that I think a lot of times, these monsters and ghosts, who are supposed to be the evil ones, are the ones that, let's say, sacrifice themselves for the human, because the human in the end gets selfish, and, you know, the humans are written to reflect. all the not-so-good parts in us, basically. And then yet the ghosts that are supposed to be the more evil ones are the ones that sacrifice themselves for pure love, true love kind of thing. And so it's a very important story because, as with all classics that can last the test of time, it's supposed to be a collection of love stories, but in the end, it's really a commentary on society, it's a commentary on mankind. on our relationships with each other. And so it's something that explores very deep into the abyss of us, really.
Speaker #0
Yeah, we use basically the extraordinary to talk about really mundane things. It's a great way, actually, to point out our maybe shortcomings and human nature.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And for me, just you pointing out brilliantly on that word links us back to the beginning, which is this truth that we're seeking for. We always say in art, and I forgot totally the phrase, I'm not going to even try, but it is really about using the non-truth to speak about the truth. It's like we have to build up so many things that are not true only to be able to find the truth. So exactly that, using the extraordinary. To talk about mundane things, I think this is pretty much what art is, a lot of art is about.
Speaker #0
yeah right it's like we tend to say that good science fiction uh is oh yeah of you know modern days for instance you see that with uh in in in the 80s you had a lot of cyberpunk stories which was basically a criticism of uh well big corporations technology uh capitalism and all that something that is really well uh on sports actually with the world we live in nowadays but it can be the same with more extraordinary things with ghosts with you know fantastic stories too.
Speaker #1
Exactly you can just consider I just sorry the phrase just came out of my mind which is you can just consider artists as people who know how to like fight or scold people smartly because we don't we don't criticize them outright we don't go to the stage like you know we just we we have our activism and we we like stand up for what we believe in.
Speaker #0
but through our art and with craft i think that's what the beautiful thing about being an artist yeah well i think i think good art in general whatever it is you know whether it's music visual arts whatever makes you think makes you reflect maybe on who you are where you live what you do and uh well that's basically what you what you do with your latest space so inspired by yeah Lea Ojai and so these fantastic tales and So basically, what's your film about? How did you bring that to life? Can you tell us a bit more?
Speaker #1
I'll tell you about it. The craziest part was how it kind of happened, really. So what happened was that it was a period of time, let's say a few months ago, where I was really creating like crazy. I was just doing, doing, doing. Because the act of doing is already in itself something that is worth itself, right? So without knowing how I was going to use it. Or even till now, like there's a lot of things that I do, which I don't know how it's going to be used or what it is for. But the act of doing it is that important. So I just do it. But then I was in a period of time where I was feeling a bit lost because I had no idea where to bring it to. And then one day, like this piece of music. So the music came first. And it's by this brilliant composer that's so young. He's in like early 20s, based in Beijing. He's a really great composer. And I heard his track. It just came onto my path like the universe just sent it. to me and shit like immediately when i heard the track like the visual started flying out and i was just like oh my god like this is i have to do something about it because when i got the track it was just really a reference like sent to me as just okay check it out like tell me what you think and that was that uh but immediately when i heard the music and this is my relationship also to music i think because uh it's funny like when i was a film student at one point in time A teacher actually said that, no, music is, I don't know, I don't know what. It was quite a stupid thing because I didn't agree, but like if you're just saying something about how music is just a very tiny part of film. But I knew at that time, despite me, I used to be a student who was very like, afraid of hierarchy. I said I was very like, wanted to be a good student, wanted to be praised by teachers. But there was one time I knew so deep in my core that no, like music is not like the last part that you should think about. Music is like 50% at least of the film for me. And so this is my relationship to music. And so that's why when this piece of music came, I was like, yeah, this is the calling. And I also was always very interested in the story of Liao Chai. I just didn't know what to do with it because it's such a famous story. So much dramas, TV shows, movies have been done on it again and again. I grew up watching series as well, this Chinese literature. And so I didn't know what I could do with it. But then when that piece of music came, I was like, yeah. And so what's fascinating is that the music itself, the composer had his own intention, which is in Liao Zhai, something that is explored is also the san xing, which is the three natures of humankind. One is the good, the evil, and then the neutral. So this is the things that they are exploring, one of the themes that they explore inside all these stories. And so his music track was really based off this. these three things, how to bring out these three things. And then for me, I had to kind of take a seat back and because there were so much things I could do about it, like Liao Chai has so many different visual elements. I mean, it's a collection of short stories in the first place. So which story do I choose? Where do I start from? Where do I go to?
Speaker #0
So yeah, how many stories are there in total?
Speaker #1
It's a bad question to ask because I don't know the answer. We can Google. so we can we can edit it uh google is it is it i don't know thousands of stories hundreds of stories no i think it's a good can i like a number popped in my mind but it's very not scientific but i like i saw the number 96 but 96. it's a pretty decent volume yeah I'll be honest, I didn't fit in the book.
Speaker #0
That's okay.
Speaker #1
But that's the thing.
Speaker #0
We won't tell anyone. And how many did you use for your film?
Speaker #1
Yeah see, I'm going... That's what I exactly was trying to say, which is, when there's so many stories, for me there was just no way of like going like... I just didn't have the patience that I go through like every single story. But I really sat back and asked myself what the story brought me in, in whole what was the first thing that I got. And of course...
Speaker #0
The very first thing was love, right? But what about love? Because there was all kinds of love in there. There's love that crosses not just gender, but like species or whatever, dimensions. But what is it about love that I can take away? And then I realised that it is, at the crux of it, at the core of it, it's about how in every relationship that we go into, all the pain that you feel, or the joy or the love, yes, it's triggered by the other person because without the other person there, you can't really just feel these things for yourself. But at the end of the day, all the relationships are just a battle between you and you. Because everything that you're reacting to, when your partner triggers something to you, it happens because of you, not because of your partner. Because when this partner goes, if you realize, then the next partner, if you didn't heal those wounds yet, or whatever you're dealing with inside, the monsters that you're dealing with inside, the next one, you react the same way. So it's your demons in your heart.
Speaker #1
It's all about perception and how you... how you react to things and what triggers you and what
Speaker #0
I don't know what makes who you are basically it's definitely perception but I would go that's why the story in the end is called my film is called demons in the heart because I mean it's a period of time where I was really going through a lot of demons in my heart because you have to face all the shadows inside of yourself and being a relationship is what brings it out so it's not so much about as in love is great because it helps you realize all the things inside of yourself that you might want to fix or not want to fix but you know at least it brings out all the demons but it's that every relationship that you go in i think if people have gone through difficult relationships it's you cannot blame the other person for it basically there's nothing to be blamed um
Speaker #1
on the other person everything's on yourself that was what i was exploring through this film and how much time did it take to uh because i saw i saw the film and it's uh it's pretty great i must say so i was wondering uh how much time did you spend from you know the inception of the idea yeah well let's do something with uh yaojai work and uh at the moment it was released how much time will you think that i i don't know it's hard to say but uh i think i i suspect there was a lot of work put in it uh so i would say i don't know six months one year something like that oh that's quite beautiful here
Speaker #0
I mean, there was a lot of work put into it. I think my eyesight went... I always say each project makes my eyes like a bit blinder than before. Because you guys don't know how much... Like people like us, I mean, all the ones in our industry, the amount of time we have to stare at the screen is really something else. But it took me two weeks to do this. But I would say it was a... This was not a normal two weeks of like, oh okay I'll go about my life and then I do two weeks. It was really like I took a retreat, like I didn't see any humans. I closed myself off in my own home and I basically just did nothing but edited and made, created and edited and created and edited. There was full on two weeks for the first part of it and then because I was heading to Beijing and I wanted to meet the composer too and then after that when I came back from the trip, but then I took a let's say one month break in between and then when I came back i took another few days to um make it into the version that you see today but like sometimes i don't like to say the time because people would say it again that like ai takes three seconds to make which i can tell you is really not true i was i was actually thinking about uh so funny all the inception of the project so the first time
Speaker #1
you had the idea to yeah work with the language eyes work then uh move to let's say i don't know write a storyboard or write the story, find the composer and all that. So two weeks is, I think it's two weeks.
Speaker #0
You have to understand that when I, I think the last time someone asked me how long it took for me to do a piece of work, a particular piece of work, I told them like my entire life. Because every single piece...
Speaker #1
That's a great answer.
Speaker #0
Because every single piece would not have happened if, like I could do this in two weeks. Because before that, I already had years and years. I've been in the industry of like film for what? 10 over years like i look young like i've been like i think 12 years officially the last time i counted so i've been like a professional in the industry for quite a while and so these are skills that i've done like to be able to like you know think while i'm moving along the road or whatever i'll prepare like i said i was also interested in leo zhai since i was a kid and i just like everything accumulated out to this point of time where i could do it like that. And so I am, yeah, I always, I always feel like It's not so fair to measure the amount of time taken. I mean, it's great for discussion, but it's very different one person's two weeks to somebody else's two weeks. Because the amount of things you do in like that two weeks, I think it's very different. But yeah, so I think the pieces of work, especially using AI, Specifically because AI is so, you know, funny thing is it's so free. You can do literally what you want. So it's actually your previous experience that's gonna be able to limit you to, like, I never used AI to churn out easily things. I used AI to do things that I cannot do in real life. That's how I use AI. And so it was very about being disciplined into looking for my specific way of using AI rather than just use AI because it's... Easy quotation marks.
Speaker #1
I think that's a really important thing. Because for a lot of people who are critical of AI, and you have a right to be, they will tell you sometimes that AI makes things easier and that you can save on costs, save on time, and that you don't need talent actually to use it, that you can do pretty much anything you want. And it's not true, or it is true, but just to an extent, to an extent because I think you need to have a vision. I think you need to be experienced in arts, basically. You're a photographer, you're a filmmaker, before being an AI artist. And I think that makes the whole difference, because I think if I try to make an AI movie, well, it may not be that good. Because I don't have the training beforehand. I could learn, but it will take time. So what I mean is that it's not the shortcut that some people think it is. It's like special effects, basically. And I like when you say that AI helps you to do things that you couldn't do otherwise. It's like, you know, in Hollywood movies, for instance, well, you use special effects because, well, you cannot have Godzilla, you know, walking in a city in New York, something like that. So, yeah, actually you use special effects and it's the same with AI. But what I like about it is that it enables more people to actually express what they have in mind. to become maybe filmmakers or more ambitious filmmakers because they don't, well, not everybody has the budget to, you know, actually create real special effects. So AI is here to help.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and it's funny, I think, you know what, the people who say that AI doesn't need talent to make, as in there was a conversation about how artists feel like people feel like they might be losing their jobs to AI because you know people like other people just use it produce something but i'll tell you that the people who use ai to just just produce something they are the ones who never respected artists in the first place okay because they were the ones they would be the ones that pay artists the least possible to get whatever because i just need something simple uh don't even you know it's kind of they are the ones in the original place who would not has have appreciated that or understood i mean it's not their fault right because there's a lot of things i don't understand about engineering so I can't blame somebody else. let's say in the business world who doesn't understand my art process, it's fair. But at the same time, I'm just trying to say that it's very unfair to just push down AI because the mess discussion, like it actually gets a bit tiring because I'm just waiting. I know that one day it would be accepted just like how photography took time to become an art form. Like photography must have at that time felt like it would destroy all painters' life. But no, now painters are working with... photography angles to do something that photography can't do. So it would not kill something else. Um, uh, the advent of type, I always go back to this example, which is when typewriters, no, sorry, when the computers were involved, uh, uh, what? Uh, invented typewriters had to go away, but like it's, it's, it's not so much the, it's so unfair to say that like, let's just not have computers then, no? Who would take a typewriter over a computer?
Speaker #1
Yeah, I think, I think that's, um. That's a relevant example. It's just like, so photography didn't kill painting. Cinema didn't kill photography. AI won't kill cinema. Things might be different. That's true. But it's just a new tool, you know, that is available to creators. And I think this is why I think it's great. And this is why I don't think creators are that threatened. Of course, there are copyright issues and things that need to be addressed. But I think at the end of the day, If you're talented, if you want to create, if you know how to use it, and if you're trained in using AI tools, you have the opportunity to do great things.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and just for the copyright issue, as in just because this is something I just want to put it out there. And I'm wondering what kind of conversations this might spark. But for me, when I was thinking for myself, how do I feel about this copywriting? Because it's true that AI was trained on a lot of people who didn't give any. what permission at all. But then at one point in time, I realized that this was coming from a lot of fear, right? Because it is very true that, let's say, an illustrator who spent 10 years trying to find their own style, like... mad heads respect down to them because they had to spend all those time to find their own thing and then now suddenly i can find their style in let's say a few minutes no with training yes you need to take a few days to train whatever okay but um it is it is very scary i think to think of it that way but at the same time if we think about it in like if we can go out of ourselves as individuals and our own gains um and we realize that the world is abundant enough and then we think about how we as a human being in this world can help this world become better or like just more beautiful a place, then maybe all of us who have been trained, who has been used in the training of the AI are contributing to this much more beautiful world where, you know, we're contributing to something that can advance things, right? Like how Van Gogh is not going to come and scream at you for copying his art. Like, you know, we all learn a lot of artists. we have to start by copying like because we start by learning the techniques that somebody else invented at one point of time but how are we not why are we not crying over us you know learning van gogh's art style or like monet's art style or whatever because this is just part of us learning from our ancestors actually really so this
Speaker #1
is for me what ai is so i i agree with that the fact that we as artists as creators uh let's say everybody steals from everybody or get inspired, whatever.
Speaker #0
Learn from each other,
Speaker #1
really. To call it. But at some point, you also need to reinvent the business model, maybe. How artists make a living, basically. Because it can threaten some of them as it makes things more available, more widely available. Yes. But that's a conversation in itself. It's interesting to have your vision of that. So about... Bye bye. AI again, what advice would you give to creators that haven't jumped on the train of AI? What's the secret sauce basically to make AI work for you as a creator?
Speaker #0
Oh, secret sauce? Okay, wait, there are two different questions. I don't know, the advice is more like before you say anything else, honestly, just try it. Spend five minutes if you want. Spend one day if you want and then you can make your own decisions about it because I think it might not be for everyone. I think people would do much better things than AI. There are a lot of things that I can't do with AI that I can do with a real world tool. So like please do not, you don't have to go into it. But I think it would be very unfair to say that you don't like it or you hate it or you don't like it's useless without even trying. It's like saying that dish is like so not tasty. Like I would never touch that dish without even trying. I think that's not so fair, right? So that's my thing. Secret sauce making AI work. I think it's still this, like you have to remember that it is still more about, at the end of the day, do you want people to know you as someone who can generate AI very well? That's one way to look at it because just like how we have very strong technicians, sound technicians that I would never be able to do a job of. They are very skilled in their skill set of technical things, right? You can become a very skilled AI technician. But then do you want to be an artist? In a sense where you have your own universe, so your own things to say. That AI can't help you unfortunately. Like ChatGPT can help you like regularise like what you want to say and find some, what is that, order or like structure to it, but it cannot invent what means a lot to you. It cannot invent your wounds, it cannot invent like your past. And so you have to go and deal with all these things and find out what is it you want to use AI to create. I think that is the... Only way AI can also have a better universe because if more and more people use it, not as a cheap, fast tool to do whatever simple stuff and companies use it to save on graphic designers. Yeah, we can just AI it. That would be quite disastrous because then, yes, AI would just be reputated to be known for this. But the more I really believe, the more people with their own minds, with their own universe, with their own things that they really need to say, come along and use AI, that's when AI would.
Speaker #1
start to flourish that's my take and that's a great one and that's a great way i think to end it thank you very much for sharing your vision uh where can we find you online uh you do have a website an instagram account where can we follow your work instagram would be great so it'll be on own your roots would be nice um it's own o-w-n-y-o-u-r
Speaker #0
dot Puan, R-O-O-T-S. So own your roots. And then my own personal account is Zoe and Zoe, like Z-O-E-A-N-D and then Z-O.
Speaker #1
Okay, so all that on Instagram?
Speaker #0
Yeah, Instagram is the best way. Like I can barely manage Instagram. I can't do other socials right now.
Speaker #1
Okay, that's great. Well, thanks a lot, Zo, and hope to see you again soon.
Speaker #0
Me too.

Chapters

Introduction
0sec
How Zo got into photography and filmmaking
39sec
AI integration in the creative process
2min
The relationship between AI and photography
5min
AI as a creative partner
8min
Combining tradition with modernity
11min
Inspiration from Liao Zhai
21min
The making of Zo’s new film
25min
Artistry, AI and copyrights
35min
Zo’s Secret Sauce
41min
Conclusion
44min

Embed

Introduction

0sec

How Zo got into photography and filmmaking

39sec

AI integration in the creative process

2min

The relationship between AI and photography

5min

AI as a creative partner

8min

Combining tradition with modernity

11min

Inspiration from Liao Zhai

21min

The making of Zo’s new film

25min

Artistry, AI and copyrights

35min

Zo’s Secret Sauce

41min

Conclusion

44min

Transcription

Speaker #0
so let's go yes hi zo hi julian it's nice to have you on the podcast really happy because it's been a while since we've been discussing this interview so welcome
Speaker #1
yes thank you hi julian and friends on the podcast can you can you say a few words in french i know you speak french Ah oui, yes. De quoi? On parle quoi? Je m'appelle Zo. I'm a friend of Julien's and hello to all Julien's friends who are listening to this podcast.
Speaker #0
Great, thank you. So Zoe, you're a visual artist, a director and a photographer. So could you tell us what brings you to photography, then to directing films and now being an AI artist?
Speaker #1
Like the long version or the short version?
Speaker #0
As you like. The long version would be good.
Speaker #1
Yeah? Okay, wait. Just a really fun part, I mean, starting with the first bit of the question, how I got into photography was really because I think I somehow always had a camera in my hand when I was a kid. When I was really, really young, I was always in front of a camera. I somehow loved to be photographed, which I quickly grew out of, I think at around five years old. Then I started holding the camera a lot without even knowing what I was really doing. And then when I think I was in primary school, which is about like eight, ten years old. Is that it? My dad had... the DSLR camera and this was at a time where there were very little like it was just out right the DSLR cameras and I he didn't use it so I just quotation marks stole it from him and use it all the time and then I think the the idea of becoming a photographer really came in high school when I had to choose like my discipline whether I my major for my high school because I chose like a special high school where you could specialize in a tech like technical thing instead of studying math and the boring science stuff. So it was down to business or cinema. And that was when I did a very hard choice of choosing cinema because at that time I didn't know, like how would you know what you want to do in 10 years if you didn't even know what you want to do in 10 days kind of thing, you know, at 16. But you know what, I made the choice and the rest is history. So for me, I went straight into cinema and photography was always a thing that was in tandem, like it was exactly the same. process even though it's very different cinema and photography but they always meant like very complementary things to me so i couldn't have done one without the other and then now moving on to ai is that it yes how do you integrate ai in your creative process and uh how did you how were you introduced to ai basically so it's quite for me it's quite a beautiful story because i've started my personal project called own your roots since 2019 and at the beginning it was really about doing a lot of things manually. So I would do photo shoots, I would do music videos and a lot of shoots for this project where I want to bring the traditional to the future. But because of the resources, because of the sheer amount of time it needs to make one single shoot happen, I end up only doing maybe one per year because I have other work going on. And also just if you think about it, the amount of time is required. to it's not just about the budget it's just about finding a team that could see your vision before it existed and because i was trying to do things that were really out of the world right so just to be able to find a team to work on a shoot together to cover i don't know location styling makeup the model the storytelling the editing because i do my quite a lot of editing on my personal project photos um it was just it's just a lot right and then AI came into play. And at first, I was really like all the other creatives. Like, oh, no, number one is going to steal all our jaws. It's so scary. Like, what is it? Blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I think everything changed when I really just jumped into it. So it can only, the relationship can only happen when you actually stop observing it and start using it. And then I went through so many different tools in AI because AI is like two letters. But it encompasses so much things. And that was when I realized that it has... become really my, something like the third camera in my tool set, because it's not just something that I use to make my life easier. Sure, like now I have literally no excuse between what is in my mind and in what I put out, because the only thing that's stopping myself back is myself. It ends up, I cannot blame having not enough budget or not enough location, not enough team, not enough time. I can't do that. And it's just me and my, the hard work that I put in to Use AI as this camera that can help me shoot things that my first two cameras cannot in the real life. Yeah, so that's the story.
Speaker #0
So yeah, it helps you save time, save money and do more things on your own.
Speaker #1
I think it definitely helps me save. Sorry, just to jump in. It definitely helps me do more things on my own, which I would have done also anyway. But I'm not sure if the time is... I mean, sure, in comparison to a human thing where you need a year to do one stuff, of course, now it's a lot of time. But I would tell, because I am a huge advocate for this, like, it does not... I don't spend less time doing AI. In fact, I spend much, much more time. put like just throwing myself into all the creations that i use because it takes so much time to do something that you really can own as like your own work and how do you um let's say uh balance ai with photography or
Speaker #0
with uh traditional you know uh video shooting because we tend to say if going back to photography we tend to say that Photography captures the truth, but AI can manipulate it. And we see that almost every day nowadays. So how do you reconcile the two? How do you find the right balance as an artist?
Speaker #1
I thought it was a very beautiful thing, your question of like, so in photography, you're chasing for the truth.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you know, you capture the instant. That's what we tend to say, that it's the truth of a single image. But with AI, you can, you know, you have deep fakes, you can alter perception, you can alter the truth, basically, because you can have, I don't know, a blue dog walking on water, or you can do pretty much anything, which is fantastic for so many reasons. But there's also some kind of fakeness in AI. So I wonder, as an artist, how you see that? Do Do you see that as an opportunity or do you think there are there's a need for rules to actually find the right balance.
Speaker #1
I think it's funny because I think balance is exactly this one word that I never really see in my own works because let's just pull that question back again. Your example of the blue dog floating on water, something like this, what is it? Technically, if you think about it, can photography do that? Yes, absolutely. You know what I'm saying? With Photoshop, even without Photoshop, yes, you have to erase a little bit of lines even if you hang the dog in mid-space in real life. There's a lot of things you can do. Yes, of course. I don't think it's just photography. Like all arts, every creator is out there to seek some kind of truth, whether it's a truth that's in themselves or a truth that they want to understand about this universe. I think that doesn't change if you're a creator that's very genuine about wanting to put something out there that means something to yourself. You have to seek for a truth. But... that means that in the end of the day, whether it's AI or whether it's photography, it's really up to the person who uses it. Because for example, for me, I wouldn't say never say never, right? But I don't think I'll ever use AI to do deep fakes because that's just not what I want to do. But yet at the same time, someone could do deep fake as in, you know, with other methods other than AI. But sure, we can, you know, put it at that. So that's why I think to sum it up, for me, if it's never already, like it was never really about balance. It's more about using what I have to express what I want to express inside. And AI came along as a very helpful partner to do that. And so I always believe that it's more about the person with everything. And this could be interesting to segue into when I was telling you, I think the last time we met, how I realized that AI is, for me, is almost a tool or is a tool for me to find myself.
Speaker #0
You see AI as a partner. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Because that's really interesting. It's not a tool for you. It's more than that.
Speaker #1
Oh yeah. I think from the very early on, I think I was talking to a friend about this. And this was the very early stages of me using AI. I really felt like it was... Yeah, okay, sorry. I was just thinking through my own process. Back then, even while I was using an AI that was giving me very... shitty reasons. As in, just very basic. It was just the start of me exploring AI and I didn't have so much mastery over it yet. But I had this very keen sense of how I was almost like speaking to the AI. So yeah, sure, people feel like they're speaking to ChatGP because that's what ChatGP is engineered to to make us feel like, right? But even when I'm entering prompts into AI because I used it, when I throw myself, I throw myself into something, I throw myself into something. That's why I say balance is never really a word for me. But so when I first threw myself into it, I could see how the machine or the information or the data set, if you would call it, the crux of it, reacted to all the prompts. And so it's like the more I got to know it, it's just like a friend, right? The more I got to know it, the more I know how to speak to this friend. Like what kind of words could come up with more interesting conversations with this friend. And yeah, I was just really conversing with it without. um you know what i'm saying it's not about asking how are you today or what do you just eat but really seeing what the this friend reacted or gave me in exchange for what i put in that that made me feel like it was a real like it was really something more than just uh i tell you what to do and then you just give that to me kind of thing because i could see i could feel the machine kind of changing as I used it.
Speaker #0
It's a conversation. So this is why you were saying that it saves you time, but maybe not that much time because you also spend a lot of time talking to the program, to the machine and to see the conversation evolve and what kind of creation it can bring.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #0
When did you start experimenting with AI? Right in the beginning when it was released, when we had access to, I don't know, Midjourney, Runway, these kind of tools?
Speaker #1
I think I got into AI, the very serious time was probably around 2022. Like that was when I really started using it in almost daily life creating kind of thing. I even took a transition year in between to, I mean so the last two years were really kind of, this year and last year were really kind of transition years where I took time off my other commission commercial work to really focus on my personal project. So that's the main time that I spent with AI really.
Speaker #0
If we go back to the beginning of your career as an artist, you started as a photographer. Then you moved to directing films. Now you use AI in your whole creative process. So is there, let's say, a word or a way to define who you are as an artist?
Speaker #1
constantly evolving and it doesn't apply to you it's an interesting question but it might be more interesting answered by you like from your perspective when you see my works right it doesn't matter whether it's the early ones or let's just say whatever you've seen so far which is probably more the ai stuff what
Speaker #0
would you call what will you define my style as like so it's a good question in it so i don't i don't know all your work yeah and it's true that most of what i'm familiar with this VIA stuff. But I would say that there's some kind of It's a combination of tradition and modernity. You really bring, let's say, traditional Asian myths and legends, and we will talk about that with the latest technology that enables it to, let's say, to shine or to be experienced in a new way. And this is what I like. It's really colorful, it's really dynamic, but it's also really rooted in tradition and in history. And as we talk about that, you have a project or an artistic movement, I don't know how to call it, but which is called Own Your Roots. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #1
Well, like, bravo to you, because whatever you just described makes me really happy because it means that, I mean, although pretty much from the moment you saw my works, they were all under Own Your Roots and whatever you described. like really perfectly describes like what i'm trying to do with the project so yay that's a good encouragement to myself um it's a project that really first started off as a multimedia project in my mind it was not going to be limited to photography or just video but i didn't know how big it could be until i think ai came in and i think i also had even more ideas that like for what it could become but at the very root of it it is about bringing traditions to the future that's It's called Own Your Roots. where I feel like it's quite interesting. I started getting very interested in traditions of the whole world actually, not just the Asian stuff. Let's say four years back and then I could also see that it's another kind of passing on, how do you say that? It mentioned it's 傳承 but in English it would be just the passing down from my parents because there was one day some light bulb just went off and I realised that oh, my parents are really interested in traditional things. But they, at the same time, both of them are in the creative field. And they both are very, very modern people. Very hip, very well-dressed and just coolest. One of the coolest, two of the coolest people I ever knew. Shout out to them.
Speaker #0
Shout out to them.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And then I saw how much I got interested in these things. And ever since I was young, I just didn't realise it. So the more I dug into it, because the idea was to how I could bring traditional things from all over the world. into the future, not just modernity, but into the future using my language, because it's just at that time photography and film. The more I dug into the traditions of the world, the more I realized that, huh, I thought that it would be very, like, the more I go deeper in, the more... different it would be because we're all so different right there are different cultures in in the world but yet the deeper i went into different cultures the more i realized that we had so much things in sync like there were so many similarities between the cultures the ancient cultures when you go back really really deep so in fact it kind of went back to this you can say it's cheesy but it's true which is we are really all one human and one world
Speaker #0
I don't think it's cheesy at all. And it's true that when you really dig into cultures, into history, you realize how many things are connected and that, well, humans are really one big species and that we tend to do things the same way, even if we express it differently, of course, and with a lot of nuances. But yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think your work really pays a good homage to all that.
Speaker #1
Thank you. I mean, so now you see a lot of Asian traditions in it because I had to start somewhere where I was most familiar with. But the goal is definitely not to just stay with the Asian cultures. And in fact, just adding on to this thing about the one world, me and my, one of my bestest, like, I call him like my little brother because he's really like a little brother. And he's based in, he's a cinematographer based in India. And we have this thing where we say that our grandfathers are basically just brothers. And then they just set off on different boats. So one ended up in Singapore and one ended up in India. That's why we became different. But. At the heart of it, there's so many things that are so similar between us. I love for this project to be able to explore all these things that are very old-fashioned. At one point in time, I wanted to really do a lot of kitschy stuff. And all the old-fashioned things that you think are just out of date and irrelevant. I wanted to bring that back because I always thought there's a lot of very wise wisdom in all these things that are old and ancient. And then just how to bring it to the now but not...
Speaker #0
just to the now but to the future yes okay so that's the the project really yeah that's really cool and uh what's the next steps for a project basically because uh i know that you have exhibitions so in asia i think in singapore uh
Speaker #1
in europe too in paris maybe soon so there's a great place to go on is there something that you can tell us for you know for for this year yes it was not for this year but the prep is going on so When I was saying that at the beginning it was a multimedia project, it quickly evolved into me realizing that it has to be, it could definitely be, and I wanted it to be way bigger, so into like exhibition, immersive space, and maybe even a community and a movement at one point of time. And so we had two shows in the United States already back, was it just this year? The time has flown just so fast. I think it was in June, yeah, it was in June this year. I had a show in LA and I had a show in San Francisco, yes. And then right now, what's going to be exciting is that we just got news that the next show is going to be locked in for next year, September. So that's what we're going to prep for now. And also what is interesting to kind of tease about this is that as I went along the path, remember when I first, I said that like at the start, I think it was about traditional things but there's so many things that are traditional right everything has something that is traditional in this world but what exactly of traditions do i want to touch on and there was this one thing that i realized i kept going back into um or rather kept piquing my interest even when i was a really young kid and that went into things to do with death life and spirituality and so i'm also very actively working on i mean this this turned out to be these very specific path that I want to go down on to explore and maybe even think about. Let's say we live in a world, this is something I talked to you about, I think the last time we met, like we live in a world where more and more people start to say that they're spiritual, but they're not religious. And then you realize that, aha, but what, why do they try and kind of segregate, like, you know, differentiate themselves from religious when at the heart of both of these things. It's just this thing of spirituality. So they just don't want to subscribe to like, let's say, a certain fact, or how do you call it, like certain tribe of religions, of certain laws and rules or ways of being. But at the same time, they're all really just, I mean, I think, as humans, it's very hard to not be interested in the truth inside of yourself. Yes, you can avoid it, you can run away from it, maybe you can... escape successfully your entire life about it, but there will always be a voice inside of you. And that's what makes a lot of people empty, I think, even when they have everything in the world. If they never spend time or the resources to commit to themselves and find out the truth inside of themselves. it will always be clawing and niggling at them. And then my question to myself is that in today's world, then with everything going so fast and then you have things that are changing, you know, I mean, the way AI develops, like every single second something changes. Like I have an impression that, you know, I got into also the NFT world and the crypto world around the same time I was analysing these AI things. And you just feel like every morning you wake up and like the world has like evolved a certain way. In this crazy world, what then is the new spiritual temple for people like us, maybe who don't subscribe necessarily to any religion, but definitely are on the path to seek certain truths or try to figure out this world? And so that is my question to myself. And with all that being said, it's just to link back to what's going to happen next year in September. We're going to work with a temple to bring an exhibition, but not just your traditional painting on the wall. art on the wall exhibition but really something that is well i have this thing about the word immersive because i feel like it's used so much like people just they put a projector or three projectors or four projectors on the wall and they call it immersive but i really want to make it into an experience that people can walk into and immersive is a great word but i think i would look to explore how to make immersive really even more immersive than just the technical putting a few projectors in a room yeah
Speaker #0
We were talking about how you blend tradition with modernity, with technology. So one of your latest work is inspired from an ancient Chinese work that you told me about, which is, I think, a work by Liao Zai of specialties of a Chinese studio, if I remember well.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the English translation is the special tales of a
Speaker #0
Chinese studio.
Speaker #1
I think in French it's what? they can't Contes et étranges? No, no, extraordinaire.
Speaker #0
Les contes extraordinaires. Oui, de Laotai. So I don't know much about that. I've read a little bit about it, but I'm no expert, obviously. So can you tell us first a little bit about these tales, the importance they have in Chinese culture, and then your project, the movie you actually directed about that, Bébé Aïe?
Speaker #1
So this piece of... tale which is maybe not as famous outside of China yet than you know a story like Sun Wukong the Monkey King especially now with like black myth and everything coming out it has taken over the world but it's a very important piece of classic literature for let's say the Asian community and you would find like not the exact same stories but you would see that in a lot of Asian cultures we use the ghost to tell a lot of different stories and then this particular story of Liao Chai it's actually a collection of many many short stories And most of them, I mean, pretty much the formula, it's about like a ghost, a female ghost, falling in love with this male scholar who is, you know, trying to do his studies, but then this beautiful woman just comes and takes his soul away. But the irony is that I think a lot of times, these monsters and ghosts, who are supposed to be the evil ones, are the ones that, let's say, sacrifice themselves for the human, because the human in the end gets selfish, and, you know, the humans are written to reflect. all the not-so-good parts in us, basically. And then yet the ghosts that are supposed to be the more evil ones are the ones that sacrifice themselves for pure love, true love kind of thing. And so it's a very important story because, as with all classics that can last the test of time, it's supposed to be a collection of love stories, but in the end, it's really a commentary on society, it's a commentary on mankind. on our relationships with each other. And so it's something that explores very deep into the abyss of us, really.
Speaker #0
Yeah, we use basically the extraordinary to talk about really mundane things. It's a great way, actually, to point out our maybe shortcomings and human nature.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And for me, just you pointing out brilliantly on that word links us back to the beginning, which is this truth that we're seeking for. We always say in art, and I forgot totally the phrase, I'm not going to even try, but it is really about using the non-truth to speak about the truth. It's like we have to build up so many things that are not true only to be able to find the truth. So exactly that, using the extraordinary. To talk about mundane things, I think this is pretty much what art is, a lot of art is about.
Speaker #0
yeah right it's like we tend to say that good science fiction uh is oh yeah of you know modern days for instance you see that with uh in in in the 80s you had a lot of cyberpunk stories which was basically a criticism of uh well big corporations technology uh capitalism and all that something that is really well uh on sports actually with the world we live in nowadays but it can be the same with more extraordinary things with ghosts with you know fantastic stories too.
Speaker #1
Exactly you can just consider I just sorry the phrase just came out of my mind which is you can just consider artists as people who know how to like fight or scold people smartly because we don't we don't criticize them outright we don't go to the stage like you know we just we we have our activism and we we like stand up for what we believe in.
Speaker #0
but through our art and with craft i think that's what the beautiful thing about being an artist yeah well i think i think good art in general whatever it is you know whether it's music visual arts whatever makes you think makes you reflect maybe on who you are where you live what you do and uh well that's basically what you what you do with your latest space so inspired by yeah Lea Ojai and so these fantastic tales and So basically, what's your film about? How did you bring that to life? Can you tell us a bit more?
Speaker #1
I'll tell you about it. The craziest part was how it kind of happened, really. So what happened was that it was a period of time, let's say a few months ago, where I was really creating like crazy. I was just doing, doing, doing. Because the act of doing is already in itself something that is worth itself, right? So without knowing how I was going to use it. Or even till now, like there's a lot of things that I do, which I don't know how it's going to be used or what it is for. But the act of doing it is that important. So I just do it. But then I was in a period of time where I was feeling a bit lost because I had no idea where to bring it to. And then one day, like this piece of music. So the music came first. And it's by this brilliant composer that's so young. He's in like early 20s, based in Beijing. He's a really great composer. And I heard his track. It just came onto my path like the universe just sent it. to me and shit like immediately when i heard the track like the visual started flying out and i was just like oh my god like this is i have to do something about it because when i got the track it was just really a reference like sent to me as just okay check it out like tell me what you think and that was that uh but immediately when i heard the music and this is my relationship also to music i think because uh it's funny like when i was a film student at one point in time A teacher actually said that, no, music is, I don't know, I don't know what. It was quite a stupid thing because I didn't agree, but like if you're just saying something about how music is just a very tiny part of film. But I knew at that time, despite me, I used to be a student who was very like, afraid of hierarchy. I said I was very like, wanted to be a good student, wanted to be praised by teachers. But there was one time I knew so deep in my core that no, like music is not like the last part that you should think about. Music is like 50% at least of the film for me. And so this is my relationship to music. And so that's why when this piece of music came, I was like, yeah, this is the calling. And I also was always very interested in the story of Liao Chai. I just didn't know what to do with it because it's such a famous story. So much dramas, TV shows, movies have been done on it again and again. I grew up watching series as well, this Chinese literature. And so I didn't know what I could do with it. But then when that piece of music came, I was like, yeah. And so what's fascinating is that the music itself, the composer had his own intention, which is in Liao Zhai, something that is explored is also the san xing, which is the three natures of humankind. One is the good, the evil, and then the neutral. So this is the things that they are exploring, one of the themes that they explore inside all these stories. And so his music track was really based off this. these three things, how to bring out these three things. And then for me, I had to kind of take a seat back and because there were so much things I could do about it, like Liao Chai has so many different visual elements. I mean, it's a collection of short stories in the first place. So which story do I choose? Where do I start from? Where do I go to?
Speaker #0
So yeah, how many stories are there in total?
Speaker #1
It's a bad question to ask because I don't know the answer. We can Google. so we can we can edit it uh google is it is it i don't know thousands of stories hundreds of stories no i think it's a good can i like a number popped in my mind but it's very not scientific but i like i saw the number 96 but 96. it's a pretty decent volume yeah I'll be honest, I didn't fit in the book.
Speaker #0
That's okay.
Speaker #1
But that's the thing.
Speaker #0
We won't tell anyone. And how many did you use for your film?
Speaker #1
Yeah see, I'm going... That's what I exactly was trying to say, which is, when there's so many stories, for me there was just no way of like going like... I just didn't have the patience that I go through like every single story. But I really sat back and asked myself what the story brought me in, in whole what was the first thing that I got. And of course...
Speaker #0
The very first thing was love, right? But what about love? Because there was all kinds of love in there. There's love that crosses not just gender, but like species or whatever, dimensions. But what is it about love that I can take away? And then I realised that it is, at the crux of it, at the core of it, it's about how in every relationship that we go into, all the pain that you feel, or the joy or the love, yes, it's triggered by the other person because without the other person there, you can't really just feel these things for yourself. But at the end of the day, all the relationships are just a battle between you and you. Because everything that you're reacting to, when your partner triggers something to you, it happens because of you, not because of your partner. Because when this partner goes, if you realize, then the next partner, if you didn't heal those wounds yet, or whatever you're dealing with inside, the monsters that you're dealing with inside, the next one, you react the same way. So it's your demons in your heart.
Speaker #1
It's all about perception and how you... how you react to things and what triggers you and what
Speaker #0
I don't know what makes who you are basically it's definitely perception but I would go that's why the story in the end is called my film is called demons in the heart because I mean it's a period of time where I was really going through a lot of demons in my heart because you have to face all the shadows inside of yourself and being a relationship is what brings it out so it's not so much about as in love is great because it helps you realize all the things inside of yourself that you might want to fix or not want to fix but you know at least it brings out all the demons but it's that every relationship that you go in i think if people have gone through difficult relationships it's you cannot blame the other person for it basically there's nothing to be blamed um
Speaker #1
on the other person everything's on yourself that was what i was exploring through this film and how much time did it take to uh because i saw i saw the film and it's uh it's pretty great i must say so i was wondering uh how much time did you spend from you know the inception of the idea yeah well let's do something with uh yaojai work and uh at the moment it was released how much time will you think that i i don't know it's hard to say but uh i think i i suspect there was a lot of work put in it uh so i would say i don't know six months one year something like that oh that's quite beautiful here
Speaker #0
I mean, there was a lot of work put into it. I think my eyesight went... I always say each project makes my eyes like a bit blinder than before. Because you guys don't know how much... Like people like us, I mean, all the ones in our industry, the amount of time we have to stare at the screen is really something else. But it took me two weeks to do this. But I would say it was a... This was not a normal two weeks of like, oh okay I'll go about my life and then I do two weeks. It was really like I took a retreat, like I didn't see any humans. I closed myself off in my own home and I basically just did nothing but edited and made, created and edited and created and edited. There was full on two weeks for the first part of it and then because I was heading to Beijing and I wanted to meet the composer too and then after that when I came back from the trip, but then I took a let's say one month break in between and then when I came back i took another few days to um make it into the version that you see today but like sometimes i don't like to say the time because people would say it again that like ai takes three seconds to make which i can tell you is really not true i was i was actually thinking about uh so funny all the inception of the project so the first time
Speaker #1
you had the idea to yeah work with the language eyes work then uh move to let's say i don't know write a storyboard or write the story, find the composer and all that. So two weeks is, I think it's two weeks.
Speaker #0
You have to understand that when I, I think the last time someone asked me how long it took for me to do a piece of work, a particular piece of work, I told them like my entire life. Because every single piece...
Speaker #1
That's a great answer.
Speaker #0
Because every single piece would not have happened if, like I could do this in two weeks. Because before that, I already had years and years. I've been in the industry of like film for what? 10 over years like i look young like i've been like i think 12 years officially the last time i counted so i've been like a professional in the industry for quite a while and so these are skills that i've done like to be able to like you know think while i'm moving along the road or whatever i'll prepare like i said i was also interested in leo zhai since i was a kid and i just like everything accumulated out to this point of time where i could do it like that. And so I am, yeah, I always, I always feel like It's not so fair to measure the amount of time taken. I mean, it's great for discussion, but it's very different one person's two weeks to somebody else's two weeks. Because the amount of things you do in like that two weeks, I think it's very different. But yeah, so I think the pieces of work, especially using AI, Specifically because AI is so, you know, funny thing is it's so free. You can do literally what you want. So it's actually your previous experience that's gonna be able to limit you to, like, I never used AI to churn out easily things. I used AI to do things that I cannot do in real life. That's how I use AI. And so it was very about being disciplined into looking for my specific way of using AI rather than just use AI because it's... Easy quotation marks.
Speaker #1
I think that's a really important thing. Because for a lot of people who are critical of AI, and you have a right to be, they will tell you sometimes that AI makes things easier and that you can save on costs, save on time, and that you don't need talent actually to use it, that you can do pretty much anything you want. And it's not true, or it is true, but just to an extent, to an extent because I think you need to have a vision. I think you need to be experienced in arts, basically. You're a photographer, you're a filmmaker, before being an AI artist. And I think that makes the whole difference, because I think if I try to make an AI movie, well, it may not be that good. Because I don't have the training beforehand. I could learn, but it will take time. So what I mean is that it's not the shortcut that some people think it is. It's like special effects, basically. And I like when you say that AI helps you to do things that you couldn't do otherwise. It's like, you know, in Hollywood movies, for instance, well, you use special effects because, well, you cannot have Godzilla, you know, walking in a city in New York, something like that. So, yeah, actually you use special effects and it's the same with AI. But what I like about it is that it enables more people to actually express what they have in mind. to become maybe filmmakers or more ambitious filmmakers because they don't, well, not everybody has the budget to, you know, actually create real special effects. So AI is here to help.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and it's funny, I think, you know what, the people who say that AI doesn't need talent to make, as in there was a conversation about how artists feel like people feel like they might be losing their jobs to AI because you know people like other people just use it produce something but i'll tell you that the people who use ai to just just produce something they are the ones who never respected artists in the first place okay because they were the ones they would be the ones that pay artists the least possible to get whatever because i just need something simple uh don't even you know it's kind of they are the ones in the original place who would not has have appreciated that or understood i mean it's not their fault right because there's a lot of things i don't understand about engineering so I can't blame somebody else. let's say in the business world who doesn't understand my art process, it's fair. But at the same time, I'm just trying to say that it's very unfair to just push down AI because the mess discussion, like it actually gets a bit tiring because I'm just waiting. I know that one day it would be accepted just like how photography took time to become an art form. Like photography must have at that time felt like it would destroy all painters' life. But no, now painters are working with... photography angles to do something that photography can't do. So it would not kill something else. Um, uh, the advent of type, I always go back to this example, which is when typewriters, no, sorry, when the computers were involved, uh, uh, what? Uh, invented typewriters had to go away, but like it's, it's, it's not so much the, it's so unfair to say that like, let's just not have computers then, no? Who would take a typewriter over a computer?
Speaker #1
Yeah, I think, I think that's, um. That's a relevant example. It's just like, so photography didn't kill painting. Cinema didn't kill photography. AI won't kill cinema. Things might be different. That's true. But it's just a new tool, you know, that is available to creators. And I think this is why I think it's great. And this is why I don't think creators are that threatened. Of course, there are copyright issues and things that need to be addressed. But I think at the end of the day, If you're talented, if you want to create, if you know how to use it, and if you're trained in using AI tools, you have the opportunity to do great things.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and just for the copyright issue, as in just because this is something I just want to put it out there. And I'm wondering what kind of conversations this might spark. But for me, when I was thinking for myself, how do I feel about this copywriting? Because it's true that AI was trained on a lot of people who didn't give any. what permission at all. But then at one point in time, I realized that this was coming from a lot of fear, right? Because it is very true that, let's say, an illustrator who spent 10 years trying to find their own style, like... mad heads respect down to them because they had to spend all those time to find their own thing and then now suddenly i can find their style in let's say a few minutes no with training yes you need to take a few days to train whatever okay but um it is it is very scary i think to think of it that way but at the same time if we think about it in like if we can go out of ourselves as individuals and our own gains um and we realize that the world is abundant enough and then we think about how we as a human being in this world can help this world become better or like just more beautiful a place, then maybe all of us who have been trained, who has been used in the training of the AI are contributing to this much more beautiful world where, you know, we're contributing to something that can advance things, right? Like how Van Gogh is not going to come and scream at you for copying his art. Like, you know, we all learn a lot of artists. we have to start by copying like because we start by learning the techniques that somebody else invented at one point of time but how are we not why are we not crying over us you know learning van gogh's art style or like monet's art style or whatever because this is just part of us learning from our ancestors actually really so this
Speaker #1
is for me what ai is so i i agree with that the fact that we as artists as creators uh let's say everybody steals from everybody or get inspired, whatever.
Speaker #0
Learn from each other,
Speaker #1
really. To call it. But at some point, you also need to reinvent the business model, maybe. How artists make a living, basically. Because it can threaten some of them as it makes things more available, more widely available. Yes. But that's a conversation in itself. It's interesting to have your vision of that. So about... Bye bye. AI again, what advice would you give to creators that haven't jumped on the train of AI? What's the secret sauce basically to make AI work for you as a creator?
Speaker #0
Oh, secret sauce? Okay, wait, there are two different questions. I don't know, the advice is more like before you say anything else, honestly, just try it. Spend five minutes if you want. Spend one day if you want and then you can make your own decisions about it because I think it might not be for everyone. I think people would do much better things than AI. There are a lot of things that I can't do with AI that I can do with a real world tool. So like please do not, you don't have to go into it. But I think it would be very unfair to say that you don't like it or you hate it or you don't like it's useless without even trying. It's like saying that dish is like so not tasty. Like I would never touch that dish without even trying. I think that's not so fair, right? So that's my thing. Secret sauce making AI work. I think it's still this, like you have to remember that it is still more about, at the end of the day, do you want people to know you as someone who can generate AI very well? That's one way to look at it because just like how we have very strong technicians, sound technicians that I would never be able to do a job of. They are very skilled in their skill set of technical things, right? You can become a very skilled AI technician. But then do you want to be an artist? In a sense where you have your own universe, so your own things to say. That AI can't help you unfortunately. Like ChatGPT can help you like regularise like what you want to say and find some, what is that, order or like structure to it, but it cannot invent what means a lot to you. It cannot invent your wounds, it cannot invent like your past. And so you have to go and deal with all these things and find out what is it you want to use AI to create. I think that is the... Only way AI can also have a better universe because if more and more people use it, not as a cheap, fast tool to do whatever simple stuff and companies use it to save on graphic designers. Yeah, we can just AI it. That would be quite disastrous because then, yes, AI would just be reputated to be known for this. But the more I really believe, the more people with their own minds, with their own universe, with their own things that they really need to say, come along and use AI, that's when AI would.
Speaker #1
start to flourish that's my take and that's a great one and that's a great way i think to end it thank you very much for sharing your vision uh where can we find you online uh you do have a website an instagram account where can we follow your work instagram would be great so it'll be on own your roots would be nice um it's own o-w-n-y-o-u-r
Speaker #0
dot Puan, R-O-O-T-S. So own your roots. And then my own personal account is Zoe and Zoe, like Z-O-E-A-N-D and then Z-O.
Speaker #1
Okay, so all that on Instagram?
Speaker #0
Yeah, Instagram is the best way. Like I can barely manage Instagram. I can't do other socials right now.
Speaker #1
Okay, that's great. Well, thanks a lot, Zo, and hope to see you again soon.
Speaker #0
Me too.

Chapters

Introduction

0sec

How Zo got into photography and filmmaking

39sec

AI integration in the creative process

2min

The relationship between AI and photography

5min

AI as a creative partner

8min

Combining tradition with modernity

11min

Inspiration from Liao Zhai

21min

The making of Zo’s new film

25min

Artistry, AI and copyrights

35min

Zo’s Secret Sauce

41min

Conclusion

44min