At the begin­ning of July, Dr. Maria del Mar Gar­cía Jiménez from the Uni­ver­sity of Seville began her approx­im­ately two-month research stay at the Uni­ver­sity of Tübin­gen as a vis­it­ing schol­ar at the Insti­tute of Media Stud­ies. She will not only be part of the Tübin­gen research group but also share insights into her own research. To kick off her stay in Tübin­gen, she gave a lec­ture on Wed­nes­day, 10th July 2024, about AI in art, film, and pho­to­graphy. You can find the art­icle about the invit­a­tion to the col­loqui­um here.

In her lec­ture, she emphas­ised the chal­lenge of trans­form­ing art cre­ations and teach­ing in the field of AI in art, where the rap­id devel­op­ment of gen­er­at­ive AI requires rethink­ing con­cepts of cre­ativ­ity and the role of artists. She also sees a fun­da­ment­al dif­fer­ence between art and design: while art often fas­cin­ates through emo­tions, ideas, and indi­vidu­al cre­at­ive abil­it­ies, design has a func­tion­al com­pon­ent. The works of artists are per­son­al expres­sions that often have a deep­er emo­tion­al or philo­soph­ic­al mean­ing. In con­trast, design is pur­pose­ful and aims to provide solu­tions or meet spe­cif­ic require­ments. How­ever, both use sim­il­ar tools to cre­ate images and share sim­il­ar aes­thet­ic concerns. 

Maria del Mar explained that the intro­duc­tion of AI into visu­al storytelling has led the art world into a phase of meta­morph­os­is, sim­il­ar to what Wal­ter Ben­jamin described in his writ­ings. On one hand, AI allows artists to remain com­pet­it­ive and explore new cre­at­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies. On the oth­er hand, this tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ment also brings fears of change and con­cerns about being replaced by AI.

Maria del Mar stated that AI has the poten­tial to rad­ic­ally change the art world. The tra­di­tion­al lan­guage of paint­ing is insuf­fi­cient to describe the new forms of expres­sion and pos­sib­il­it­ies gen­er­ated by AI. Since the early digit­al revolu­tion (1950–1979), there have been crit­ic­al voices towards new cre­ations, but today the integ­ra­tion of AI in art is unstop­pable. Con­cerned voices about the dis­rupt­ive poten­tial of AI arose quickly over the past years. AI is seen as a threat and the cause for the end of an era. This fear of change is not new — his­tory shows sim­il­ar reac­tions to tech­no­lo­gic­al advances. For instance, pho­to­graphy was ini­tially seen as a threat to paint­ing, before it ulti­mately stim­u­lated the devel­op­ment of paint­ing and led to avant­garde move­ments. Maria del Mar thus con­cludes that artists have always embraced new tech­no­lo­gies, recog­nising their poten­tial to trans­form artist­ic lan­guages. With some time, AI surely will be accep­ted in the artist­ic dis­course as well. 

Maria del Mar fur­ther intro­duces the by the span­ish media coined term "GAN­ism", which the media por­traits as con­nec­tion between gen­er­at­ive adversari­al net­works (GANs) and aes­thet­ic move­ments. She points out, that this idea deserves more thor­ough ana­lys­is. In short, it sug­gests con­tinu­ity rather than rup­ture, recog­nising that AI-gen­er­ated images are part of the ongo­ing evol­u­tion of art. This implies that the avant­garde that emerges from this tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ment will be integ­rated into the his­tor­ic­al frame­work of art in the future, con­trib­ut­ing to its ever­chan­ging evolution. 

As an example, she men­tions the works of the Neur­al Glitch series by Mario Klinge­mann. Neur­al Glitch is a tech­nique explored by Klinge­mann, in which he manip­u­lates GANs. Through this manip­u­la­tion, the mod­els mis­in­ter­pret the data and can be seen as insights into autonom­ous cre­ativ­ity. This dis­tor­tion also cre­ates a sense of the uncanny.

©"Quasi­mondo" Mario Klinge­mann. Neur­al Glitch / Mis­taken Iden­tity. Octo­ber 28, 2018.* Source: Neur­al Glitch / Mis­taken Identity

A mile­stone in AI art was the Por­trait of Edmond de Belamy, which was the first AI-gen­er­ated art­work to be auc­tioned in 2018 for $432,500. The sale of this por­trait sparked dis­cus­sions about copy­right, which Maria del Mar addresses in her lec­ture. She asks wheth­er we are con­fus­ing the medi­um (AI) with the artist since two cre­at­ors are involved: code developers and prompt authors. In this con­text, she relates Wal­ter Benjamin's concept of aura to AI art. In his 1935 essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeit­al­ter sein­er tech­nis­chen Reproduzi­erbar­keit [The Work of Art in the Age of Mech­an­ic­al Repro­duc­tion], Ben­jamin explains that the aura of a work of art is char­ac­ter­ised by its remote­ness, authen­ti­city, and unique­ness. He argues that the aura dimin­ishes through mech­an­ic­al repro­duc­tion. Accord­ing to Maria del Mar, the authen­ti­city of these new AI works could res­ult from the rela­tion­ship between artists and AI and the mer­ging of tech­no­logy and cre­ativ­ity as the key to a work's unique character.

Anoth­er import­ant point is the chal­lenges in AI art edu­ca­tion. Maria del Mar con­duc­ted a study on the integ­ra­tion of AI-gen­er­ated images by intro­du­cing AI into the Fine Arts cur­riculum. She found that only 8 out of 30 stu­dents used AI. Per­cep­tions of AI's use­ful­ness were also very dif­fer­ent. The stu­dents had vary­ing views on using AI in art and pre­ferred tra­di­tion­al tools. Accord­ing to Maria del Mar, the digit­al divide, edu­ca­tion­al chal­lenges, and nav­ig­at­ing new tech­no­lo­gies are cent­ral aspects of AI art education.

A final import­ant point in Maria del Mar's lec­ture is a quote from Wassily Kand­in­sky, 1911:

Accord­ing to her, this state­ment is still rel­ev­ant today, as artists are encour­aged to use all avail­able means to real­ise their cre­at­ive vis­ions, includ­ing AI. The integ­ra­tion of AI into art is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion that brings both chal­lenges and new possibilities.

About Dr. Maria del Mar Gar­cía Jímenez

Maria del Mar is an artist and lec­turer in Fine Arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Seville, Spain, and a mem­ber of the research group HUM337: Plastic, Sequen­tial, Exper­i­ment­al Print­mak­ing and New Tech­no­lo­gies, The­ory and Prac­tice. Her expert­ise lies in artist­ic cre­ation and research in art. Her research interests include explor­ing the fields of pho­to­graphy and the con­nec­tions and hybrid­isa­tions of con­tem­por­ary art, media, digit­al tech­no­logy, and new tech­no­lo­gies, includ­ing their soci­opol­it­ic­al and cul­tur­al impacts.

*The images used are for illus­trat­ing the tech­niques related to AI in art explained in the art­icle. Non-com­mer­cial use for journ­al­ist­ic pur­poses. §51 of the Ger­man Copy­right Act (UrhG) and Art­icle 5 of the Ger­man Basic Law (GG) on press free­dom apply in Germany.