When Machine and Human Meet. Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-6107.2024.07

Keywords:

artificial intelligence, aesthetics, human-computer interaction, computer art, postproduction, posthumanism

Abstract

This article touches on the issue of human-technology relations in the age of artificial intelligence. It poses questions about the changes that have taken place in the field of art under the influence of advanced machine learning systems. The last decade of AI’s successes enforces the need to rethink the aesthetic categories, including an attempt to redefine the place and role of the artist in a technologically determined reality. The cited historical examples of aesthetic reflection accompanying computer art of the 1960s largely anticipated the changes taking place today, while also serving an important metacritical function. Today’s critical AI art can play a key role in raising awareness of the processes taking place and uncovering the workings of artificial intelligence algorithms, which are often locked in black boxes and their operations and assumptions inaccessible to human understanding.

References

Astray, M. (2024). [Instagram account] milesastray. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8KTUy7xdwm/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=a6e9bab5-6ffd-477a-8b9b-b05b2d131130&img_index=1 [Accessed: 10.12.2024].

Bense, M. (1969), Einführung in die informationische Ästhetik. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Bourriaud, N. (2002). Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, New York: Lukas & Sternberg.

Bryan-Kinns, N. (2024). Reflections on Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIXARTS). Available at: https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/january-february-2024/reflections-on-explainable-ai-for-the-arts-xaixarts [Accessed: 10.12.2024]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3636457

Burnham, J., (2015). Dissolve into Comprehension: Writings and Interviews, 1964–2004. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Burnham, J. W. (1968). Systems Esthetics. Artforum, 7 (1), pp. 30–35.

Burnham, J. W. (1970). Software. Information Technology. It’s new meaning for art. [Catalog of an exhibition held at the Jewish Museum, New York, September 16 through November 8, 1970]. Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/3/31/Software_Information_Technology_Its_New_Meaning_for_Art_catalogue.pdf [Accessed: 10.12.2024].

Burnham, J. W. (1970a). The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems. In On the Future of Art. New York: The Viking Press.

Coeckelbergh, M. (2020). AI Ethics. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: The MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12549.001.0001

Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300252392

Ehn, P. (2002). Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus. In Beardon, C. and Malmborg, L. (eds.), Digital Creativity: a Reader (Innovations in Art and Design). Lisse, Abingdon, Exton (PA), Tokyo: Swets&Zeitlinger Publishers, pp. 18–28.

Goodfellow, P. (2024). The Distributed Authorship of Art in the Age of AI. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/13/5/149 [Accessed: 10.12.2024]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050149

Habermas, J. (1996). Moderna — niedokończony projekt (1980). Przegląd Filozoficzny — Nowa Seria, 1, pp. 47–61.

Haraway, D. (1985). Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/4/4c/Haraway_Donna_1985_A_Manifesto_for_Cyborgs_Science_Technology_and_Socialist_Feminism_in_the_1980s.pdf [Accessed: 10.12.2024].

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago. London: The University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226321394.001.0001

Krewani, A. (2024). Where Machine and Muse Meet – Towards a Creativity of AI Art. In Voigts, E. et al. (eds.), Artificial Inteligence. Inteligence Art. Human-Machine Interaction and Creative Practice. Bielefeld: Transcript. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839469224-011

Licklider, J. C. R. (1960). Man-Computer Symbiosis. Available at: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html [Accessed: 10.12.2024].

Manovich L. (2019). AI Aesthetics. Available at: https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/ai-aesthetics [Accessed: 10.12.2024]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479817474.003.0005

Manovich, L. and Arielli E. (2021–2024). Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art and Visual Media. Available at: https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/artificial-aesthetics [Accessed: 10.12.2024].

Nake, F. (2002). Personal Recollections of a Distant Beginning. In L. Candy, E. A. Edmonds and F. Poltronieri (eds.), Explorations in Art and Technology, London: Springer.

Navas, E. (2023). The Rise of Metacreativity. AI Aesthetics After Remix. New York–London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003164401

Negroponte, N. (1970). The Architecture Machine. Toward A More Human Environment. Cambridge–Massachusetts–London: The MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8269.001.0001

Pias, C. (2007). „Hollerith ‘Feathered Crystal’”: Art, Science, and Computing in the Era of Cybernetics, Grey Room, 39 (29), pp. 111–133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/grey.2007.1.29.110

Ploin, A., Eynon, R., Hjorth I. and Osborne, M. A. (2022). AI and the Arts: How Machine Learning is Changing Artistic Work. Report from the Creative Algorithmic Intelligence Research Project. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK.

Ridler, A. and Sinders C. (2023). AI is human after All. The New Real Magazine., 1 (1), Generative AI Arts: A Synthetic Future Foretold. https://doi.org/10.2218/newreal.9255 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/newreal.9246

Schelling, F. W. (1983). Filozofia sztuki. Translated by K. Krzemieniowa. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwa Naukowe.

Shanken, E. A. (2001). Sztuka w epoce informacji – technologia a sztuka konceptualna. Translated by L. Kettner. Kwartalnik filmowy, 35/36 (95/96), pp. 302–322. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36744/kf.4136

Shanken, E. A. (2016). Contemporary Art and New Media: Digital Divide or Hybrid Discourse? In Ch. Paul (ed.) A Companion to Digital Art. London: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118475249.ch21

Stewart, W. (2020). “The Higher Forms Are Also the Weaker Ones”: Technics and Humanism in Max Bense’s “Technical Existence”. Grey Room, 81, pp. 36–47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/grey_a_00308

Szykowna, S. (2024). Sztuka AI i hakowanie antropocentrycznego mitu kreatywności. Kultura Współczesna, 4 (129), pp. 45–59.

Walewska-Choptiany, J. (2021). Cyfrowa Dekada. Związki sztuki i technologii w latach 1969–1975. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.

Weiser, M. (1991). The Computer for the 21st Century. Available at: https://ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/Weiser-Computer21stCentury-SciAm.pdf [Accessed: 11.12.2024]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0991-94

Vaswani, et al. (2017). Attention is All You Need. Available at: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2017/file/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Paper.pdf [Accessed: 11.12.2024].

Zeilinger, M. (2021). Tactical Entanglements: AI Art, Creative Agency, and the Limits of Intellectual Property. Lüneburg: Meson Press.

Żylińska, J. (2020). AI Art. Machine Visions and Warped Dreams. London: Open Humanities Press.

Downloads

Published

2025-05-29

How to Cite

Szykowna, Sylwia. 2025. “When Machine and Human Meet. Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica, no. 45 (May): 31-45. https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-6107.2024.07.