Speaker:

Patrick Jagoda | University of Chicago
Chair of Cinema and Media Studies; Program Director, Media Arts and Design; William Rainey Harper Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, English Language and Literature, the College, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Title | Art as, with, against, and for Artificial Intelligence: From Nonconscious Experiments to Alien Imaginaries

Abstract
Artistic experiments with generative AI build on earlier modernist, surrealist, and Dada experiments with text and image in which nonconscious cognition and algorithmic processes contributed to aesthetic innovations. Though this talk builds on this lineage, I ask: Can generative AI replenish or meaningfully transform contemporary art, ranging from literature to moving images to interactive games? This presentation proposes a series of prepositional relations of art composed as, with, against, and for AI. Rather than celebrating AI, I am more interested in exploring how “critical making” techniques can contribute to critical AI studies, in the humanities and arts, as it has been developed by Rita Raley, Jennifer Rhee, Joanna Zylinska, and others. Methodologically, this talk also explores how generative AI can help us further develop the field of speculative design.

Our new Lecture series Forms of Intelligence: Literary Knowledge in the Age of AI aims to bring in leading literature scholars to address questions about how our discipline might speak to the current moment—drawing on centuries of thinking about questions that computer scientists have recently taken up, regarding context, culture, affect, translation, and so on.

Upcoming Speaker in the Series:

April 15, Rita Raley | UCSB