E-Book Overview
Can computers be creative? Is algorithmic art just a form of Candy Crush? Cutting through the smoke and mirrors surrounding computation, robotics and artificial intelligence,<em> Joanna Zylinska argues that, to understand the promise of AI for the creative fields, we must not confine ourselves solely to the realm of aesthetics. Instead, we need to address the role and position of the human in the current technical setup – including the associated issues of labour, robotisation and, last but not least, extinction. Offering a critique of the socio-political underpinnings of AI, <em>AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams raises poignant questions about the conditions of art making and creativity today.
The book critically examines artworks that use AI, be it in the form of visual style transfer, algorithmic experiment or critical commentary. It also engages with their predecessors, including robotic art and net art. <em>AI Art includes a project from Zylinska’s own art practice titled ‘View from the Window’, which explores human and nonhuman forms of intelligence, perception and action. The book closes with speculation on future art – and on art’s future.
E-Book Content
AI ART Machine Visions and Warped Dreams
JOANNA ZYLINSKA
M E DI A : A RT : W RITE : N OW
AI Art
Machine Visions and Warped Dreams Joanna Zylinska
The MEDIA : ART : WRITE : NOW series mobilises the medium of writing as a mode of critical enquiry and aesthetic expression. Its books capture the most original developments in technology-based arts and other forms of creative media: AI and computational arts, gaming, digital and post-digital productions, soft and wet media, interactive and participative arts, open platforms, photography, photomedia and, last but not least, amateur media practice. They convey the urgency of the project via their style, length and mode of engagement. In both length and tone, they sit somewhere between an extended essay and a monograph. Series Editor: Joanna Zylinska
AI Art
Machine Visions and Warped Dreams Joanna Zylinska
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS London 2020
First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2020 Copyright © 2020 Joanna Zylinska
Freely available at: http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/ai-art/ This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy their work so long as the authors and source are cited and resulting derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Read more about the license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Cover Art, figures, and other media included with this book may be under different copyright restrictions. Print ISBN 978-1-78542-086-3 PDF ISBN 978-1-78542-085-6
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS
Open Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide. More at http://openhumanitiespress.org/
Contents Acknowledgements 7 AI (and) Art: An Introduction 11 1. A So-Called Intelligence 23 2. The Ethics of AI, or How to Tell Better Stories about Technology 29 3. Why Now? AI as the Anthropocene Imperative 39 4. ‘Can Computers Be Creative?’: A Misguided Question 49 5. Artists, Robots and ‘Fun’ 57 6. The Work of Art in the Age of Machinic Creation 65 7. Generative AI Art as Candy Crush 75 8. Seeing like a Machine, Telling like a Human 87 9. Undigital Photography 105 10. An Uber for Art? 117 11. From Net Art and Post-Internet Art to Artificially In