The project Synthetic Eros was created by Chinese designer Zhiqin Lu, also known as Betty Lu. Zhinqin Lu grew up in China, where the subject of sex is largely taboo, both in its expression, and even education. Neither schools nor parents in most cases would educate their children. Through lack of structured education, one has to rely on other sources to understand sexually. In this somewhat unsupervised way of learning, it isn't always easy to make the right distinctions, especially with taboos such as sex. In our day and age, eroticsim, “a philosophical contemplation concerning aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love,” is squandered, with pornography being the counter representation of sexual expression. She makes the distinction that the sole purpose of pornography is sexual arousal through the portrayal of overt, sexual content. While eroticism can represent a deeper meaning of love, connection through the integration of sexual content, pornography is shallow, removed from a context that properly represents sexual partnership, yet the boundary between the two remains slim and difficult to rely on. Today most information is fed to us through algorithms. Sexuality is often represented through a pornographic lens, and when that is the case eroticism culture is lost. With a desire to call attention to this allowance of a taboo to shift our cultural perception of sexuality, came the idea to revive Eros, the Greek god of Love. Art can carry emotion and depth, and reintegrate eroticism and that’s what Zhiqin did through this project.
The project Synthetic Ethos has three components. The first component, which is known as her AI porn, is a sequence created using the Generative adversarial network. She fed the GAN data of plants, landscape photos, abstract paintings, and shunga (erotic japanese) paintings, but no actual pornography. This was to ensure the abstraction and ambiguity of sexuality that would then instead highlight its eroticism through hazy imagery. An explicit imagery would “violate Eros”. The accompanying aspect of this project was a physical device using interactive vibrations that would ignite when touched by the participant. It would translate the sequence she created, but in a hyper speed to create the sensation that you and the device are engaging in the erotic experience together, which creates another layer of intimacy and closeness, counteracting the effects of a cultural taboo. Lastly with this concept she developed an animation inspired by “Studies in Perception I” by Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton in 1967. They created a nude image using electronic symbols. Their piece was a landmark being the first published nude in the New York Times. She created her animation with the similar idea of using electron symbols that would move and create erotic shapes and interactions via UNICODEs. The animation was created to balance perceptibility with censorship. The unicode was created from Chinese erotic idioms to give the least possible amount of information that could still properly represent Eros.
Her work was impactful to me not only for the ambitious exploration of cultural taboos but how carefully thought out and integrated the concept was in each step of the process. Having a reason for how the sequence moves, as well as the coding itself. The concept was represented throughout its creation resulting in an impactful and beautiful outcome. Having interactive aspects only further transmits the concept, allowing oneself to come face to face with such a repressive taboo. As technology is becoming increasingly integrated in all aspects of culture, more incongruities will be fed to us through algorithms that without proper attention can further shape the way a culture perceives and portrays itself from the large scale to each of its individuals. Having art that calls on taboos will forever be critical to the advancements and preservation of morals through society.Â
