Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Semi-autonomous computational systems, such as machine learning, have long been doing the heavy lifting for us in terms of taking the burden of calculation away from the human brain. Yet, while there is a wide range of engineering literature about computational creativity, there is much less emanating from the art practice. This paper explores computational creativity in the time of ‘deep tech’, from the perspective of posthuman design. Examining how new relations are emergent between humans and algorithms, ethical and philosophical debates come to the fore, such as the rapid uptake of Silicon Valley-esque transhumanism, versus the inclusive and feminist approach taken by posthuman thought. Tracing the organic origins of machine learning in the post-war era, when concepts such as neural networks were transposed from the organic world to the computational, this paper follows computational creativity through to emergent manifestations in the present day. Investigating new systems for generative art such as non-fungible tokens, methods such as machine learning, and techniques such as augmented, extended and virtual reality, this research shines a light on posthuman creativity in a time of deep technology.