CIAO
SHAO
CIAO CHAO, known as Chao CUI, is a freelance Artistic Director from China living in Paris. Through her AI creations, Chao seeks to create fashion editorials without budget or production constraints, where she can let all her creativity and imagination run wild. Unlike the artificial aesthetics that we find a lot in AI creations, Chao wants to keep a realistic approach to a real photo shoot.
Her inspiration comes from her daily life, whether it's a walk in the park, reading a book or watching a movie, also around a conversation with friends. She likes to be able to develop a story in detail, which she then tests through the AI to see if it works visually, but sometimes the AI rendering is not what we had imagined in our head. Like the time, following the vision of the film "Fire of Love", documentary based on the life of the couple Katia and Maurice Krafft who gave their life for the passion of volcanoes. She had loved their story and tried to develop it through AI, with volcanoes, ashes, lava but nothing really worked after several tests, so she preferred to give up.
She defines her style as vintage, because she loves film photography so she very often uses "film photography" in her prompts, but she also loves everything dreamlike related to fantasy, even the strange. As for the meaning, it doesn't really matter since fashion editorials are often just aesthetic. But in some of her works, there can be a deeper meaning, like her series "I see you see me", where she can bring another angle of view that can relate to street photography or a documentary, but in the world of fashion.
For Chao, AI is only a tool allowing a new approach to creation such as the NFTs and the Metaverse. The artistic vision remains the same, it's just the medium that changes, and all these artistic universes can co-exist together without any problem and give birth to a multitude of new AI Artists.
"A lot of people say, 'AI has no soul. On the contrary, I see the souls of the works created by AI. They are so fascinating and out of the box. Every success and every failure is a creature of art."
She likes to combine different apps like Chat GPT, Midjourney, PS Beta, etc., in creating her works. She even considers them as "her assistants", even if they sometimes have trouble understanding, they always try to offer something.
"When the loom was invented, the workers destroyed the machine. Why?
Because their value has been demolished. What they could do and what they had achieved in their entire lives was easily crushed by a machine. Well, in 2023, the same thing is happening to us creatives.
Be ready for the new era rather than despise AI."
When people criticize AI saying it's only used to collect data and imitate it. For her, the human does the same thing but much more slowly. We spend our time researching, prototyping without even arriving at AI results. We are all influenced by something it be Picasso, Monet, Juergen Teller or Richard Avedon, adapting their style in our own way. It's the same operation with the AI except that it will do it a million times faster than us.
"Will it replace the human?
Will the human be controlled by AI?
It sounds so much like science fiction, but I feel that if that day comes,
I won't be angry or hopeless,
because look what we have done on planet earth, we human beings...
Why not let silicon-based life continue the journey of exploring the universe
instead of carbon-based life"
Ciao Chao