Page 348 - The Black Box Book

mathematically minimized. (Joler, V. & Pasquinelli, M., 2020) Although
the process of reduction is commonly performed by human intelligence
as well. However, it should be borne in mind that reduction is not only
a necessary and expedient process, but also a highly delicate, aggressive,
and violent process, because in the process we eliminate informational
and alternative possibilities. However, learning algorithms always make
the most average connection between the most averagely understood
terms of various categories and the most averagely understood visual
representation, and they do it very fast and in enormous numbers.
This technology’s products essentially meet all the criteria for kitsch.
(Kulka, 2002) Individually created and selected images do not provide
the strongest visual experience; rather, the output of this technology as
a whole produces a sensation of immanent familiarity, a déjà vu of Western
culture.It makes it possible to make souvenirs out of images of the re-
cent, digitalized, selective present. But the promise of unlimited creation
cannot be fulfilled. The dream of infinite possibilities literally turns here
into a nightmare of imagination. Images produced by Midjourney look fa-
miliar not only because they combine and syncretize familiar images into
surrealist fusions, but also because we have long been accustomed to
surrealist assemblages and postmodern fusions from our media experi-
ence. We live in a culture of constant visual oversaturation. The products
of text-to-image engines are just another highlight of this process.
Learning algorithms offer the development of creativity. But
the question is what kind of creativity, and under what conditions, could
we consider this powerful combinatorics of data and categories to be
a creative tool. Indeed, some of the promises are turning out to be false.
One important example is the dissolution of the dream of the assumed and
computationally documentable success of rapper FN Meka. This artificial
musician resembling a cyborg was developed using data gathered from
video games and social networks. However, the musician’s lyrics have been
shown to be hateful, reproduce racist stereotypes and make light of police
violence against the black community. (Dazed, 2022, August 26) (BBC,
2022, August 24) In the music industry, artificial stars have been created
to meet audience demand for years. (Stassen, 2021, April 1) However, this
example confirms that neural networks, as designed (back propagated),
reinforce features of what they process and therefore reinforce existing
stereotypes in society. We could see the rapper FN Mekka as an exam-
ple of a new type of advanced musical instrument composed of learning
algorithms. However, it seems that it is not easy to understand how this
instrument is actually played.
Lev Manovich emphasizes that artificial intelligence is playing
an increasingly important role in our cultural lives and behaviors, in-
creasingly automating the processes of aesthetic creation and aesthetic
choices, from mobile phone text editors, recommendation apps, and all
manner of profile photo editing apps. (Manovich, 2018) There are a grow-
ing number of freely available AI apps for creating aesthetically satisfying
texts, images, and music. We can witness how social media pages de-
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voted to the output of publicly accessible engines for generating photos
using machine learning algorithms are teeming with stereotypical content.
On the other hand, according to Manovich, the same trends might
also boost diversity due to the global availability of local cultural DNA.
(Manovich, 2018) However, we must remember that these are cultural
objects that have been picked and modified to be moved to the digital
online world and then re-distributed – in the form of a selection – only to
those with modern digital gadgets and internet access.
Slavoj Žižek, in his famous Pokémon Go metaphor, emphasizes
that the reality we live in is far more a product of fantasy than rational
knowledge (Žižek, 2017, November 7) But before we utilize algorithms to
inject new ‘fantasy items’ into our reality, we must acknowledge that our
horizon is already filled with a variety of products of our fantasy. In a figu-
rative sense, the world is already overrun with Pokémon. We are currently
immersed in the products of a dominant subjectivity and its imagina-
tion. If we, as authors and artists, wish to participate in the formation of
the world, we are not limited to merely superimposing more and more
objects on top of those that already exist. We can concentrate on rec-
ognizing, exposing, and removing them from our line of vision. The iden-
tification of these artifacts is invariably a creative endeavor that takes
focused attention and bold imagination.
I D I O T S
What is then the role of art in a space defined by digital technologies
and artificial intelligence? And why might it be interesting to ask wheth-
er artificial intelligence has a sense of humor? In the summer of 2019,
the curatorial collective ScreenSaverGallery, consisting of Barbora Trnková,
Marie Meixnerová, Tomáš Javůrek, was approached by MeetFactory cu-
rators Tereza Jindrová and Eva Bláhová to prepare a project on artificial
intelligence and art. We initially concentrated on figuring out how to ap-
proach these fundamental issues and challenges, but we also wanted to
steer clear of the conventional curatorial method because it would either
not provide an answer or would provide a very oblique one.
Our curatorial approach was founded on challenging the general
public’s romantic, science fiction-based notion of artificial intelligence. We
intended to step-by-step conjure up artificial intelligence for the audience
and portray it in a grotesque shape, i.e., the one we believe best matches
it. First and foremost, we sought to free the relationship between art and
artificial intelligence of the assumptions that accompany its anthromor-
phization... Marie Meixner quoted Weizenbaum in this context:
“And since the domain of human intelligence is, except for a small
set of formal problems, determined by the humanity of man, any
other intelligence, however great, must necessarily be remote from
the human domain.” (Weizenbaum, J., 2002, p. 94).
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