Catastrophic Forgetting: When Memory Meets Machine Dreams
The Art of Remembering and Forgetting at Untitled Art Miami 2024
After nearly a year of experimentation, Catastrophic Forgetting feels like a significant evolution in my practice. It’s more than just an exploration of memory and AI, it’s a dialogue between past and present, human and machine, and the tangible and digital.
I’m beyond excited to introduce my new series, Catastrophic Forgetting, at Untitled Art Miami 2024 from December 4–8 at Booth B36. Curated by TENDER, this series marks my final exhibition of the year, a deeply personal exploration of memory, myth, and AI.
Details About Untitled Art Miami 2024
Curated by TENDER, Catastrophic Forgetting is part of the group exhibition Lore, featuring an incredible lineup of generative and AI-driven artworks that explore the theme of myth and cultural narratives.
🗓️ Dates: December 4–8, 2024
📍 Location: Booth B36, Miami Beach
🔗 Access the Sale and Join the Discussion on verse
Offered as both physical and digital artworks, the series includes 25 physical works created at a high-resolution print studio in New York, available in two sizes. Sales will open from December 18, and you can add the date to your calendar and join a Discord channel to discuss the artworks through the 🔗 verse platform.
Main Pieces: 12.9 x 23 inches, priced at $2,500
Additional Works: Starting at $1,800
Inspirations Behind “Catastrophic Forgetting”
The spark for this series came during a conversation at a Google event with the director of Kanazawa 21st Century Museum. It was here that I first encountered the term "Catastrophic Forgetting," a phenomenon in AI where learning new data causes the loss of existing information. This concept resonated deeply with me, not just as a technical challenge for machines but as a mirror of our own struggles in today’s information-dense world.
I began to think about the fleeting nature of memory. How cultural references, historical events, and even personal moments can fade as new experiences take precedence. This led me to explore how AI might reinterpret and synthesize these fragments of memory, creating something entirely new in the process.
At the same time, I wanted to reflect on the shared myths and symbols that connect us across cultures. Catastrophic Forgetting merges Eastern and Western iconography, such as ancient myths, anime, digital nostalgia, and internet memes into a surreal tapestry of past, present, and future.
Memory, Machines, and the Creative Process
While traditional surrealism sought to capture human dreams and unconscious thought, I wanted to explore what I call the "Machine Unconscious." Using a custom-built ConfigUI tool in collaboration with AI researcher Kanji Kyoda, I trained the AI to interpret cultural symbols and generate dreamlike combinations. The result is a series of works that feel both familiar and otherworldly, an AI’s interpretation of human memory and myth.
The creation of Catastrophic Forgetting involved a five-generation process where thousands of images were generated, refined, and reconstructed. Each stage added layers of complexity, combining "errors" from the AI’s learning process with human curation to produce visually striking works. Once selected, the images were further upscaled to enhance their intricate details, creating a tactile quality that is unique to this series.
The series draws on a wide range of cultural symbols, from Japanese anime motifs and Windows 98 wallpapers to Western mythological archetypes. These elements blend seamlessly in the works, showcasing the universality of storytelling and the rapid cross-cultural exchange of ideas in the digital age.
I hope these works spark curiosity and conversation about how we remember, what we forget, and the role of technology in shaping those processes.
If you’re in Miami, I hope you’ll visit Booth B36 at Untitled Art to experience Catastrophic Forgetting in person. For those who can’t attend, I’ll be sharing updates and exclusive previews through my digital platforms.
Warm regards,
Emi Kusano ♡