The artist creating mind-bending images of an alternate Hong Kong through AI

CNN —

Bianca Tse is among a growing number of artists embracing AI. “It’s shortened the path between my ideas and my visions,” said the 43-year-old, sitting in front of “Breathing Room,” a photo recently showcased at the Blue Lotus Gallery in Hong Kong.

In it, three Chinese men appear to sit comfortably, albeit precariously, on stools atop a narrow tower of derelict flats.

This photograph could not exist in real life, she said, but it captures the feel of the city’s cramped living conditions, and a distinct Hong Kong “flavor.”

Tse’s work is part fantasy — generated from AI — and part historical reference, drawing from her own childhood memories and the history of Hong Kong’s working class. Many of her images are set in an AI-exaggerated version of the Kowloon Walled City — a former Qing dynasty fortress that became the most densely populated place on Earth. Refugees fleeing from mainland China during the Chinese civil war, flooded into then-British ruled Hong Kong and had made the enclave their home.

It was demolished in the 1990s but still looms large in the memories of Hong Kong residents.

By working with AI, Tse said she has learned not to fear the technology. “I think if everyone tried to use AI, they’d know that the role of the artist or designer cannot be replaced,” she explained. In “Overpopulation,” a precarious-looking tower of people stand shoulder-to-shoulder. The Kowloon Walled City was “not a monstrosity of concrete and steel,” Tse said, but rather “a complex organism woven with resilient human narratives.”

While she never visited the Walled City, Tse has been fascinated by its history, and sees it as representative of a Hong Kong that is culturally and architecturally disappearing amid ongoing