This lecture is based on insights developed in a research seminar organised at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Arts and Cultural Studies in 2024, which hosted artists and researchers investigating generative AI (GenAI). It proposes a framework for categorising artistic approaches to working critically with and on GenAI, resulting in three coordinates: AI imaginaries, AI deconstructions, and AI exposures. Instead of assuming a mere reproduction of aesthetics already inherent in the underlying training datasets, the framework investigates the question of how artistic practices may critically engage with GenAI. The research seminar as well as the paper derived from its results – and on which this talk is based – was coordinated/co-written by Mick With Berland, Daniel Irrgang, and Tanya Ravn Ag.
Daniel Irrgang is a scholar in media, art, and culture with a focus on the enactment of knowledge, e.g., in exhibitions, diagrammatic depictions, or algorithmic practices in art and design. His current main research topics are oriented towards presentation and representation strategies in climate research, as well as towards structures of inequality (algorithmic, technical, practices) in the digital sphere. He is a postdoctoral researcher within the 'Climate Futures in Digital Cultures' research initiative at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and associated with the 'Design, Diversity und New Commons' section at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin.
