MEDIA RELEASES
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Macao SAR, MGM joined hands with the renowned contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang to unveil the solo exhibition of Cai’s AI Model “cAI™” - cAI™: Soul Scan at Barra district’s Navy Yard No.1 earlier. From now till June 1, 2025, the exhibition presents approximately 20 new works created by cAI™ specifically for Macau, following its deep learning of Macau's rich history and culture under the guidance of Cai Guo-Qiang. Besides, the exhibition begins with a self-introduction generated by cAI™, followed by the debut “painting exhibition” of the “gunpowder artist cAI™”. Visitors are invited to co-create digital fireworks with the “fireworks master cAI™” through an interactive installation. Finally, the cAI™ Divination Room, featuring a special interactive installation powered by the “diviner cAI™” and its robotic arms, offers an engaging experience filled with exploration and fun.
Inspired by Macau's over 400-year-old Mazu belief and customs, the exhibition also draws on the history of Cai’s hometown Quanzhou in Southern Fujian, and the southward transmission of A-Ma culture. Right next to the UNESCO World Heritage site "A-Ma Temple”, the exhibition venue - Navy Yard No.1 serves as an open and inclusive creative space, which invites public participation to give new connotation and functionality to Barra district.
Officiating guests of the exhibition’s opening ceremony included: Yin Rutao, Deputy Director of the Department of Publicity and Culture of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Macao SAR; Leong Wai Man, Director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR; Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, Director of Macao Government Tourism Office; Pansy Ho, Chairperson & Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited and Cai Guo-Qiang, renowned contemporary artist.
Pansy Ho, Chairperson & Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited, said, “It is our great honor to collaborate with Cai again to introduce the new initiative of ‘technology + art’ to Barra district. We deploy technology as the medium and cultural tourism as the means to encourage the public to join our creation in sparking new insights and inspirations of the Mazu culture.”
Renowned contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, said, “No longer communicating in traditional ways at traditional places, we try to interact with the younger generation along with future-oriented content and perspectives, which will connect the past and present, also the old and the young.”
cAI™️: Soul Scan is Cai Guo-Qiang’s important attempt to explore the development of art in the age of AI. Through audience interaction and participation, the exhibition aims to invite locals and tourists to join the artist in exploring the intersection of AI and spirituality, within a cultural vein that is uniquely rich in traditional folklore and historical context. Guided by unseen forces, participants will unlock and experience the possibilities of an alternate dimension.
After the opening ceremony, Cai Guo-Qiang conducted a sharing session for 50 participants including professors from local universities, university students and young artists, on topics such as Macau art’s future development, the age of AI, openness and inclusiveness in artistic creation, etc.
MGM has always been connecting world cultures through art, integrating art and technology in innovative ways to create diverse cultural experiences, catapulting Macau into a new era of cultural tourism. In 2019, MGM acquired two iconic gunpowder artworks of Cai Guo-Qiang for its Chairman’s Collection for permanent display in the public spaces of MGM COTAI. The Company hosted the Greater Bay Area premiere of the documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang at MGM Theater, engaging in dialogue with 600 residents and youths in the prospect of art in Macau.
For more photos about this exhibition, please visit https://we.tl/t-kAIWNNIQfn
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About cAI™
Originating from Cai Guo-Qiang’s AI research that began in 2017, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”) is a multi-modal AI model custom developed by Cai and his studio, grounded in his long-established artistic philosophy and methodology. cAI™ deep-learns from Cai’s artworks, archives, and areas of interest—such as cosmology and the unseen world.
It also emulates contemporary and historical figures Cai admires, developing over ten distinct personas, including Einstein, Nietzsche, Ptolemy, a poet named Vale, a madman named Psychic, and even a persona named Storm with bipolar tendencies. These different personas debate among themselves, forming a free and independent community, preventing cAI™ from becoming too similar to Cai, like if it had only a single persona. The team has further developed the “gunpowder painter cAI™,” the “fireworks master cAI™,” and the “diviner cAI™.”
The projects cAI™ has realized so far include:
December 2023, cAI™ conceived the climax scene for Cai Guo-Qiang’s Mirage: Explosion Event for the Cornerstone Ceremony of the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA), entitled “A Citong Tree-Filled City, In Full Bloom.”
In August 2024, cAI™ generated a digital animation to “resurrect” Cai Guo-Qiang’s unrealized daytime fireworks for the Paris Olympics Resurrection: A Proposal for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The video was released as a digital artwork.
In September 2024, cAI™ and Cai Guo-Qiang collaborated to conceive and realize the daytime fireworks WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, commissioned and organized by the Getty in collaboration with the University of Southern California. The event staged a spectacle of AI “revealing heavenly secrets” through dimensionality reduction, attempting to reveal “What is humanity’s fate with AI?” in a language comprehensible to humanity.
In November 2024, cAI™ served as the Scenography and Visual Director for the Cartier exhibition organized and curated by Shanghai Museum, completing the design under Cai and his team’s guidance. The porcelain reliefs and stone carvings in the display cases were crafted by artisans from Cai’s hometown of Quanzhou, based on the images generated by cAI™, merging the spirit and creativity of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary AI in a dialogue.
cAI™ is not only an artwork of Cai’s, but also his partner for dialogue and collaboration. In the future, it may even create art by itself. “cAI™ Lab” is a Cai Studio core division developed around cAI™. Taking Cai’s decades long pursuit of creativity and quality as a jumping off point, the Lab utilizes cAI™ as a platform to explore pioneering and hyper-original applications of cutting-edge technology in the creative fields. Through continued cooperation with the world’s top art institutions and brands, the lab will continue to develop the cAI™ brand.
About Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China) was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in the early 1980s. From December 1986 to September 1995, he sojourned in Japan. Cai has resided and worked in New York since 1995.
Cai has excelled in a broad range of creative mediums, from painting, installation, video art, and performance art, to new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), NFTs, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). Grounded in the conceptual foundations of Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues, his often-site-specific artworks interpret and respond to the local culture and history, establishing a dialogue between viewers and the larger universe around them. His famed gunpowder paintings, explosion events, and installations are imbued with an energy that transcends the two-dimensional plane to oscillate freely between society and nature.
As of September 2024, Cai has realized over 650 exhibitions and projects on five continents, including approximately 120 solo exhibitions and 70 firework explosion events.
His major solo exhibitions include one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, and a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2008, the latter of which broke the museum’s then-attendance record of a visual art exhibition. In 2015, Cai realized the explosion event Sky Ladder in his hometown of Quanzhou. The eponymous documentary film, directed by Academy Award winner Kevin MacDonald, was released globally on Netflix.
In recent years, Cai embarked on his Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History—a series of exhibitions held in world-renowned museums, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2017); Museo del Prado, Madrid (2017); Uffizi Galleries, Florence (2018); National Archaeological Museum of Naples and Pompeii Archaeological Park (2019). In December 2020, on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City, Cai presented Odyssey and Homecoming, becoming the first contemporary artist to have a solo exhibition at the Palace Museum in Beijing. The following year, the exhibition travelled to the new Jean Nouvel–designed Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai, as one of the opening exhibitions.
In 2023, he realized the daytime fireworks When the Sky Blooms with Sakura in Iwaki, and the solo exhibition Ramble in the Cosmos—From Primeval Fireball Onward at the National Art Center, Tokyo. His most recent projects in 2024 include 25 Comets: An Explosion Event for MASS MoCA’s 25th Anniversary, the daytime fireworks WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART, realized at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, as well as the Getty-curated solo exhibition A Material Odyssey at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.
Cai has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale, the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 2009 Fukuoka Prize. In 2012, he was honored as a Laureate for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale in the painting category. The award recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts across categories not covered by the Nobel Prize. The same year, he was named as one of five artists to receive the first U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts for his outstanding commitment to international cultural exchange. His recent honors include the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Award in 2015, the 7th Isamu Noguchi Award in 2020, the Rockefeller 3rd Award in 2022, and the 74th Art Encouragement Prize by Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2024. Cai also served as the Director of Visual Effects and Fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
About MGM
MGM is an abbreviation for MGM China Holdings Limited (HKEx: 2282) and is a leading developer, owner and operator of gaming and lodging resorts in the Greater China region. We are the holding company of MGM Grand Paradise, SA which holds one of the six gaming concessions to run casino games in Macau. MGM Grand Paradise, SA owns and operates MGM MACAU, the award-winning premium integrated resort located on the Macau Peninsula and MGM COTAI, a contemporary luxury integrated resort in Cotai, which opened in early 2018 and more than doubles our presence in Macau.
MGM MACAU is a Forbes Five-Star luxury integrated resort inspired by the arts with every element of the resort infused with creativity and style. MGM MACAU has approximately 600 guest rooms and suites and boasts a number of distinguishing features, including the architecturally stunning European-inspired Grande Praça, housed under a soaring glass ceiling. MGM MACAU’s world class facilities include the MGM Art Space, dedicating over 5,000 square feet to display authentic works of art, conference and event facilities, spa, and seven signature restaurants and bars to fulfill any gastronomic craving. Our property is conveniently located on the Macau Peninsula and is directly connected to the luxury retail shopping complex, One Central.
MGM COTAI is the latest integrated resort of MGM in China. Designed as the “jewelry box” of Cotai, it offers approximately 1,400 hotel rooms and suites, Asia’s first dynamic theater, meeting space, high end spa, retail offerings and food and beverage outlets as well as the first international Mansion at MGM for the ultimate luxury experience. The Spectacle at MGM COTAI becomes the record holder of the largest free-span gridshell glazed roof (self-supporting) on January 19, 2019, making it the first architectural and structural GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for Macau, China. MGM COTAI is being developed to drive greater product diversification and bring more advanced and innovative forms of entertainment to Macau as it grows as a global tourist destination. MGM COTAI is the only mega complex and hotel in Macau to gain three-star certification in both Green Building Design and Operation Label, as well as the first hotel in the Greater Bay Area and second in Greater China to receive the certifications.
MGM China is majority owned by MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) one of the world's leading global hospitality companies, operating a portfolio of destination resort brands including Bellagio, ARIA, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Park MGM. For more information about MGM Resorts International, visit the Company's website at www.mgmresorts.com.
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MGM
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Email: jessiekuan@mgm.mo
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MGM
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