AI Hokusai Art+AI Residency

Alex May was selected as the UK artist for the AI Hokusai Art+AI Residency, an international programme running from October 2024 to January 2025. Hosted by the AI Hokusai project, the residency brought together artists from Japan, Argentina, France, Spain, and the UK to explore how contemporary AI tools might be used critically and creatively in dialogue with Hokusai’s legacy.

The programme combined workshops, experimentation, and the development of new work, culminating in a virtual exhibition in January 2025. For May, the residency offered a focused context for asking how machine vision systems see the world, and whether they can recognise anything like the essence Hokusai sought in his subjects or only produce a distorted mirror of classification, pattern, and invention.

That question sits directly within May’s wider practice, where technology is never treated as a neutral instrument. Instead, it becomes a way of thinking about memory, mediation, and the unstable boundary between what is preserved and what is transformed. The residency also fed directly into the development of ESSENCE, extending May’s ongoing interest in how automated systems record, reduce, and reconstruct reality.

Further information about the programme is available from the AI Hokusai residency page.