Digital Dialogue
Asynchronous Session
Visualization of Dreams: An Analysis of Artificial Intelligence in Surrealist Art Creation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Uradee Amnueypol, Hong Yang, Yifan Wang, Xuanwu Zhao
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes integrated into artistic works, artists are increasingly focused on the interaction between AI and art forms. This paper focuses on surrealism art, researching the expression of AI in surrealistic art creation through examination and comparison. In terms of visual effects, AI can imitate surrealistic works but lacks the expression of human emotions and individual will. This is the most essential difference from actual artist works. However, this research discovers three perspectives on the role of AI in surrealistic art creation aspects: 1. Offering a new mode of creative expression, AI enables humans to convey their imagination into visual form and express themselves through the rapid generation of visual images. 2. Introducing new forms of communication, as communicating with AI allows people to understand and imagine both reality and the surreal. 3. Serving as a new implementing tool, AI becomes an integral part of an artwork and presents the final form of art. This study provides insights into surrealistic art creation in the new era.
Visible and Invisible Interaction of Digital Art Abstract View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chanjuan Tu
Many artists create digital art using tangible interaction technologies, VR, AR, and AI painting technologies. When creating digital art, artists incorporate their emotions into form, colour, and space. Electronic media conveys digital art's materiality, while the interactive journey maintains an emotional framework. The study examines whether digital art development is an artistic or technological endeavour and how it affects aesthetic advancement or decline. Does the switch from traditional to digital art creation, expression, and materials create a new art aesthetic or change human life? This study uses ontology and emotional interaction to define and interpret digital art more precisely. We analyse the expressive space of digital art creation using digital art materials' virtual, interactive, non-realistic, mutable, and composite properties. We examine how digitalizing art materials enhances art vision's expressive forms, techniques, and content. This study examines the social and practical challenges art faces due to the participatory nature of digitisation. Our research shows the importance of digital art in visual creation, its ability to create meaning, and its immersive interactive experience. According to our interviews with 20 attendees of a digital art showcase, interactive digital art forms can improve human engagement and interaction by providing a sense of satisfaction, significance, and interactivity and an emotional understanding of the artist's creation. Digital art can make the invisible visible, offering a new way to express art.
Featured The Perspectives and Challenges of Teaching Creative Writing
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jekaterina Karelina
This research examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. In the last thirty years, there has been an explosion of creative writing teaching for all ages across the world, particularly in further and higher education institutions and yet very little research has directly addressed why the subject is taught. During and after the pandemic this industry increased hugely. I explore how has the creative writing industry changed during COVID-19 lockdowns and why people still want to write and express themselves through writing practices? Why is it so important to publish a book as a core of self-identification and self-positioning nowadays? And how to teach creative writing in the era of chatGPT?
Hollywood Superheroes and Evantropia: A Case Study of the Protagonists of Hollywood Blockbusters of the Last Twenty Years
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lorraine Klein
For more than ten years, the undeniable success of Hollywood science fiction blockbusters has been based not only on the technological excellence of special effects, which guarantee an unprecedented visual spectacle but also on the effectiveness of their scenarios created for the general public and carried by extraordinary protagonists. With the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and then the DCEU (DC Extended Universe), we have witnessed a tidal wave of superheroes inspired or directly adapted from American comics. These heroes stand out for their remarkable physical and moral strength. In this article, we will explore this figure of the hero in 70 successful American science fiction films from the last two decades. We discuss how they illustrate the trend toward “evantropy,” a neologism for “human enhancement,” as defined by Lucas Misseri. We also consider the myth of the superhuman, which seems straight out of Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory, a fictional "algorithm" that Hollywood has successfully appropriated and modernized.
Taking the Power Back – The Artists' Use of Technological Mediums to Employ Positive Change
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Newkirk
We are living in a hyper-capitalist, media-saturated society driven by commercial interests and fuelled by the pervasive manipulation of information. The art world is not exempt from these conditions. In our era of rapid technological advancement and pervasive media saturation, artists wield immense potential to influence cultural discourse and challenge prevailing power structures. This paper explores the intersection of art, technology, and power dynamics, drawing from seminal works by DeBord, McLuhan, and contemporary scholars Faucher, Briziarelli and Armano. Technology is exploited by political parties, media corporations, advertising agencies, and those in positions of power to manipulate narratives and shape public opinion. Through a critical lens, this research examines how advancements in technology shape the dissemination and manipulation of information. Providing artists with the knowledge and tools to exploit the very same techniques, strategies and technological mediums to contribute to or critique the status quo, ultimately aiming to foster positive societal transformation. This paper defines the role of artists as agents of change. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue, we can inspire new perspectives, innovative approaches, and tangible actions that advance the cause of justice, equity, and positive progress.
