[ISEA2022] Paper: Erik Nardini Medina — When the others are the machines: the challenge of relating to the new craftsman

Abstract

Short paper. Remote presentation, date: June 10

Keywords: Authorship, Artificial intelligence, Machine creativity, Computer art, Machine art, Media art, Art criticism

In face of the techno-scientific developments in the last decades, whose significant temporal mark gains dimension at the dawn of the 1960s, which glimpse in the computer-based solutions a new partner to make art with instead of making art through, arises the need to reflect upon creativity in the artificial dimension, a virtualized space whose operations are mediated, in a certain sense, by inorganic entities.
This article proposes to reflect on artistic creativity in the artificial dimension, experienced under the dynamics of co-creation, in which a new interactor emerges from cyberspace – we call it the new craftsman. The article will discuss characteristics of a scenario in which the development of artificial works seems to suggest the repositioning of the authorial discourse, articulating changes that allow us to assimilate the metamorphosis that symbolizes both a new generation of techno-images and a new moment for art-science, through a new poetics that manifests itself in a context of expanded hybridization between bodies of different natures: both organic and inorganic. Starting from the time frame that is established in the 1960s, we propose a discourse oriented to reshape the relations between human and non-human beings and suggest ways to think Artificial Intelligence (AI) in an attitude that values the differences between biological and synthetic thinking. We conclude the article by suggesting the reasons why we believe that creation with AI seems to be the greatest revolution since the advent of photography.

For the video recording of the presentation see: Amalia Creus — Technology and creative processes in a changing environment

  • Erik Nardini Medina is PhD student in Visual Arts at the Institute of Arts, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. Current research interests are focused on the investigation of new technologies and artificial intelligence in image generation, articulating the role of the artist and the role of the machine: human beings and inorganic intelligent entities are here considered bodies of different natures, somewhat equivalent systems. Issues such as machine coauthory, subversion of technology by the artist, and the problems associated with the standardization of technologies, controlled by oligopolies, are part of the discussion surrounding the paradigm of the “new craftsman”.