Abstracts

Between Technological and Aesthetic Grids: Philosophical Challenges Posed by AI Artists

GRID 2020 Abstracts

Between Technological and Aesthetic Grids:
Philosophical Challenges Posed by AI Artists

Sagit Alkobi Fishman
Independent Digital Artist & New Media Scholar

Session III: The Grid – Artistic Impressions
Monday, November 23, 2020 | 13:30-14:30 (Duet A)

In this lecture I use, as a discussion-example, a recently developed machine learning technology that employs artificial neural networks consisting of layers of arrays of grids of artificial neurons. The technology in question has underlined many of the artificial intelligent systems that aim at creating art, yielding a possibly new genre or form of art – so called AI-Art. In virtue of their learning ability, however, those grids-based art systems exhibit a high degree of autonomy in the creation process, thus inviting such questions as who or what is the artist if there is anyone to speak of, and whether, to begin with, the visual outputs of those systems can be considered works of art. To shed light on such matters I offer to ask: What is the source of meaning of works generated by or created with the substantial aid of such systems? Since the general question of the source of meaning in the creation of art has been controversial, I reflect upon several major approaches and examine them in context of AI-Art. Attempting at addressing this question in this manner, as will be shown, reveals or otherwise accentuates philosophical challenges concerning the relationship between the artist, the work, and the viewer as seen from both a traditional prism and a postmodern one.