ESSENCE

A moving-image work that shows the world as an AI vision system sees it: recognised fragments without the surrounding context that gives them meaning.

Isolated fragments from Hokusai's drawings, recognised and labelled by AI object detection, surrounded by swirling video feedback.

ESSENCE is a moving-image work in which each scene is processed through AI object recognition. Only the parts of the image that the system can identify and label remain visible. Everything around them is removed, leaving a floating world of isolated objects, partial forms, and uncertain signs.

The work connects this machine process to Hokusai’s Manga: volumes of studies that gathered subjects from the real and imaginary world into concentrated acts of observation. It also refers to ukiyo-e, often translated as “pictures of the floating world”, the print tradition through which Hokusai became known. Where Hokusai sought to reduce a subject to its living essence, ESSENCE asks whether AI recognition reveals anything essential at all, or whether it only gives us names, categories, and results that we mistake for understanding.

Around the recognised objects, clouds of video feedback drift and fold, at times echoing the force and movement of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The feedback places the image inside a closed loop of outputs, repetitions, and echoes. In this loop, ESSENCE reflects on what may be lost when we rely on systems that are powerful at producing results but detached from lived experience, embodied intuition, and the deeper context through which human meaning is made.

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

Disembodied fish and bird forms from Hokusai's Manga, isolated by AI detection and floating against a dark background with feedback trails.
Stripped of context, only the recognised objects remain.
AI detection outlines flicker across fragments of Hokusai's drawings as video feedback swirls around the isolated elements.
Detection boxes and feedback traces across the frame.
Swirling video feedback resembling Hokusai's Great Wave surrounds recognised object fragments.
Feedback loops echo the great wave of AI.