Sunshowers: AI through the lens of Japanese Shinto

"The creation and development of the world occurred through the harmonious cooperation of many spirits carrying out their respective missions. Everything contains a Kami, but not everything shows it’s Kami nature. As humans, we can often sense it, but we never completely capable of understanding the nature of these spirits."

"Sunshowers is the third in our series of real-time animation artworks, this time through the lens of Shinto. It is inspired by the opening chapter of Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams which follows a young boy as he explores a forest and stumbles across a forbidden fox wedding (Kitsune no Yomeiri)."

"Our piece explores ideas of animism and techno-animism by assigning life in the form of artificial intelligence to all of the objects, both natural and man-made, within the virtual world."

"The piece unfolds in real time with the characters themselves deciding which paths they will follow and how they will interact with environment and each others. They have been given an AI system based on video-game AI, as well as techniques of neural networks and genetic algorithms, in order to be able to make their own decisions."

"Thanks to these systems, the observer is able to follow as different AI avatars in the form of animals, spirits, flowers, trees, and rocks, become more or less talkative, afraid, inquisitive, sheltering etc. Our universe consists of nine small environments that allow all characters, including a young boy, to explore and potentially see the Fox Wedding Procession, which happens only when the sun is shining through the rain."

"The notion of animism is interesting for us, not in historical or traditional way, but in relation to ideas of object agency and it’s position in art, as well as in everyday life from a human perspective. We find the concepts of animism and AI (or technology in general) very close, because both contain human desire to interact with forces more powerful than themselves, forces that could maybe help humans to lead a more pleasant or meaningful life."

"We feel that this desire for storytelling is an essential part of human nature – always obsessed with giving meaning to inanimate objects, always creating myths and legends."

"Using real-time animation and video game technology allows us to explore new forms of storytelling in our work. The ability of video games to communicate and convey different concepts is huge, but we also love the way it allows us to keep a lightness, or even a playfulness of visual expression. With that in mind, our works are not about technology - we treat the technology as a medium, while we value the artistic side of our narratives and aesthetics, and we often combine them with other techniques, such as paintings and installations."