Page 389 - The Black Box Book

CONCLUSION

JANA HORÁKOVÁ

https://doi.org/10.5817/CZ.MUNI.M280-0225-2022-15

This publication is a follow-up publishing project initiated by
the online curatorial venture Black Box / Černá skříňka, which combines
the search for alternative approaches to fulfilling the social and cultural role
of brick-and-mortar exhibition institutions, the experience of transforming
curatorial practice at a time of the pandemic, but also an experiment with
the use of AI as a non-human curator of the exhibited artworks. These
three aspects, which have merged within the Black Box project, are
discussed separately in this publication from the broader perspective of
international online curatorial practice and the use of artificial intelligence
(AI) in various art projects in recent years.
The publication´s authors argue in favour of the proposition that
the curatorial practices of physical galleries are not transferable to
the World Wide Web because online curating and creative practice in
the digital media environment represent a distinct, evolving and media-spe-
cific practice. However, they also seek answers to how to care for online
and network-based artworks in a way appropriate to their specific form
and ethos, including ecologically sensitive solutions for the care of digital
and networked art as part of cultural heritage. Chapters dedicated to
the use of AI in curatorial practice introduce the reader to different ways of
applying machine learning, which can be divided into three key approaches:
AI as a generative tool for artefact creation, AI as an agent of curatorial
practice, and AI as an object of the critical art research.
The publication presents “a record and a theory of the present”
(MANOVICH, 2001, p. 33). The authors aimed to give testimonies of on-
line curatorial projects implemented during the 2020 lockdown, to record
the motivations for their implementation and the professional debate that
sparked around them. Placing these exhibitions in the context of scholarly
discussion on online curation and the preservation of digital and networked
art, as well as including AI curation as part of the picture of the events
described, gives the book a more general use.

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