Senses, experiences, emotions, memories: artificial intelligence as a design instead of for a design in contemporary Japan

Abstract

This paper approaches the technology of artificial intelligence (hereinafter AI) as a design-based praxis emerging from the domain of arts and humanities. The problematic of AI as a design instead of for a design has been approached through the stages of ephemeral interactive and immersive media installations and their permanent physicalizations as in media museums. Through some forty-eight interactive and immersive media installations that exemplify the physicalization of immaterial humanistic characteristics of senses, experiences, emotions and memories, and by studying their permanent physicalized hybridizations as in media museums, this paper attempts to build a pioneering case that AI can also be exploited as a design instead of its traditional image of for a design. The inclusion of Japanese perspectives in this case acts as a reminder of particular design traits resulting in the enrichment of this study instead of as being a discriminative indicator.