I wanted to let you know that Open Humanities Press has just published my new book, the contents of which will hopefully be of interest to the readers of this list. Fittingly for our times, it discusses a world behind windows and screens in which we all become part of a vapour-like global labour force, no matter how creative our occupations or ambitions are.
AI ART: MACHINE VISIONS AND WARPED DREAMS by Joanna Zylinska
Like all Open Humanities Press books, AI Art is freely available to download:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/ai-art/
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, 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, 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. 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.
About the author
Joanna Zylinska is a writer, lecturer, artist, curator, and – according to the ImageNet Roulette’s algorithm – a ‘mediatrix’. She is currently Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of a number of books on art, philosophy and technology – including The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse(University of Minnesota Press, 2018), Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press, 2017) and Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2014) – she is also involved in more experimental and collaborative publishing projects, such as Photomediations (2016). Her own art practice engages with different kinds of image-based media.
