ARTH 353 Technology and Contemporary Art

• Instructor: Dr. Tracy Valcourt

Contemporary visual culture is an important site of A.I. infiltration with A.I.-generated images now making up a significant volume of online content. Increasingly ubiquitous image generators such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, and most recently, OpenAI’s video generator Sora 2, have instrumentalized a disequilibrium between imagery with real-world indexical relationships and prompt-engineered “hypothetical” images that are fabrications of generalities and biases. A.I.-generated images are also profoundly implicated in political discourse, with, for example, the intentionally obvious form known as “A.I. slop,” playing a central role in MAGA propaganda. In this course, students will be introduced to the underlying post-humanist (TESCREAL) ideologies driving the current A.I. boom and examine select A.I.-generated trends (e.g. OpenAI’s “ghiblification”) and meme-culture phenomena (e.g. Shrimp Jesus) to contemplate the cultural, political and ideological significance of this sudden glut and range of synthetic images. Along with considering the far-ranging consequences of digital information networks dominated by synthetic imagery that threatens to overtake authentic content, this course asks what the implications of this fast-paced phenomenon are for art and art history. In a bid to answer such questions, students will be introduced to scholarship from art history, photographic theory, critical A.I. studies, and media studies — by theorists/artists such as Allan Sekula, Harun Farocki, Valentina Tanni, Trevor Paglen,  Eryk Salvaggio, Roland Meyer, and Hito Steyerl.