ESSENCE

A moving-image work that sets Hokusai's Manga against AI vision systems, exposing how machine seeing strips subjects into labels, fragments, and repetition.

Digital scene from Susceptible showing bronchi-like forms, floating tuberculosis bacilli, and coloured atmospheric layers.

ESSENCE is a moving-image work built from scans of Hokusai’s Manga, processed through custom software using AI image detection and segmentation. Detection boxes and outlines flicker across the drawings while a feedback system replicates recognised elements across the frame, gradually filling the image with repeated fragments. The work sets up a quiet encounter between Hokusai’s search for the spirit of a subject and a machine vision system that can only reduce what it sees to labels and statistical patterns.

The comparison is sharp because both systems are looking, but only one claims understanding through reduction. As the drawings are broken into detected parts and recirculated across the frame, the work shows how recognition software can preserve surface while emptying context. That tension between recording and loss is central to May’s practice.

Additional notes

  • Duration: 4 minutes 50 seconds
  • Format: MP4 video, 1920 × 1080, stereo
  • Developed during the AI Hokusai ArtTech Research Project residency, 2024–2025
  • Premiered on 15 May 2025 in AI Hokusai: Legacy Encoded

Talks, exhibitions, and updates connected to this work.

  • Algorithmic Art talk in London

    Alex May joined an Algorithmic Art event at Microsoft's Paddington offices, presenting ESSENCE and discussing artistic uses of AI.

  • AI Hokusai Art+AI Residency

    Alex May was selected as the UK artist for the AI Hokusai Art+AI Residency, an international programme exploring art, artificial intelligence, and Hokusai's continuing influence.

Selected images

Digital scene from Susceptible with branching lung-like structures and a dispersed field of glowing tuberculosis bacilli.
Visual layer from the interactive simulation.
Digital scene from Susceptible showing tuberculosis bacilli moving through dark bronchi-like structures against an illuminated background.
Detail from the installation and video version.
Digital scene from Susceptible showing tuberculosis bacilli moving through dark bronchi-like structures against an illuminated background.
Detail from the installation and video version.
Digital scene from Susceptible showing tuberculosis bacilli moving through dark bronchi-like structures against an illuminated background.
Detail from the installation and video version.