Body Meets AI: New Media Art and Digital Capitalism in East Asia

This article examines the AI imaginary through visual culture. New media artists in East Asia utilize technologies such as 3D modelling and rendering, computer vision, motion capture, and facial motion capture in their practices. Drawing on Benjamin’s notion of ‘aura’, Marx’s theory of ‘alienation’, and posthumanism theories, the paper examines the self-referential critiques on unchecked digital capitalism that both liberate and exploit the human body and labour. It first examines Cao Fei’s vision of a futuristic metropolis where cyborgs make humans obsolete. It then illustrates computer vision algorithms and motion capture techniques’ alienation of humans from their bodies, labour, experience, and environment in Fei Jun and Lu Yang’s works. Finally, analyzing Japanese and Korean examples, the paper further discusses how new media art reveals the paradox of AI and other automated technologies that simultaneously enable and constrain, offering a critical perspective on AI ’s promise and peril in rapidly digitizing societies.