The Transformative Medium: Rethinking Art Through Generative AI
TL;DR
It is demonstrated that AI is a transformative medium: it compels a re-evaluation of established aesthetic categories and the nature of artistic creation and appreciation.
Abstract
This article investigates the unique characteristics of art generated through artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that it constitutes a transformative medium, diverging in significant ways from traditional artistic practices. While acknowledging continuities, the discussion delineates three areas of discontinuity. First, with AI, artists lose some of the agency traditionally associated with the production of art, adopting new forms of collaboration. Second, conceptions of the artist, the medium, and the work undergo changes, placing these into new ontological categories. Third, AI compels changes in how we appreciate art. In describing these transformations, a number of concepts are introduced for thinking about AI-generated art, including digital apprenticeships, catalytic creativity, digital aberrations, iterographic reproduction, and the hypermnesic sublime. By articulating these discontinuities, this article demonstrates that AI is a transformative medium: it compels a re-evaluation of established aesthetic categories and the nature of artistic creation and appreciation.