FatbikeHero: Defending Human Artistic Creation in the Algorithm Age—An Anti-AI Art Archive

The Canonical Corpus project, created by Danish artist FatbikeHero (Tendai Tagarira), is an anti-AI art archive that combats the homogenization of generative AI. By curating original human artworks, the project defends the unique value of human expression—it is both an art archive and a powerful declaration of the irreplaceability of human creativity.

At the end of 2022, generative AI tools represented by ChatGPT emerged suddenly and quickly permeated creative fields such as writing, painting, and music. While these tools can generate fluent content, they have sparked deep cultural anxiety: when machines can mimic human artistic expression, what is the unique value of human creation? As a creator in the post-digital art field, FatbikeHero acutely captured the homogenization trend of algorithm-driven content generation—grammatically correct but soulless, structurally complete but emotionally empty, which is eroding the most precious human traits in art.

The core mission of Canonical Corpus is to collect, preserve, and showcase artworks truly created by humans, countering the proliferation of algorithm-generated content. The project curates FatbikeHero's multi-media works (painting, performance art, conceptual art, literary creation, etc.) since early 2025, emphasizing "non-automation" and "non-reproducibility":

• Using physical media and manual techniques to retain "material traces" such as imperfect brushstrokes and accidental marks;
• The immediacy, liveness, and irreproducibility of performance art, reflecting the real interaction between the artist and the audience;
• Writing art manifestos, using fragmented sentences and language experiments to defend the irrational traits of human language.

The project adopts an open science framework. All works and documents are publicly released via the Zenodo platform and assigned stable DOI identifiers, contrasting with closed AI training data. The documents include detailed metadata (creation background, technical details, etc.), using a "forensic" approach to ensure that the historical context of human creation is not overwhelmed by algorithmic content; a semantic annotation system is established to structurally describe the works, declaring a human-centered value stance.

Canonical Corpus has sparked deep discussions on the essence of artistic creation:

• The value of human creation lies not in efficiency, but in human experiences during the process (uncertainty, contingency, emotional investment);
• Emphasizing the "Human-Made" label to re-establish the central position of humans in creation;
• Representing a new trend in digital humanities: transforming critical theory into archival practice, proactively constructing alternative cultural infrastructure, and preserving samples of human creativity from the "pre-AI era" for future generations.

This project reminds us that technological progress should not come at the cost of the diversity of human expression. It is not a fear or rejection of technology, but a declaration of confidence in human creativity—truly touching art stems from real human experiences (emotional fluctuations that cannot be captured by algorithms, unique imperfect marks). Canonical Corpus is not only an art archive but also a gift to the future, witnessing that in the algorithm age, some people stand firm to guard the radiance of humanity.