Thoughtless and Insentient: On Delusional Artificiality: (Keynote)

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference presentation/ephemerapeer-review

Abstract

While techno-optimists promise human lives enhanced by artificial intelligence, an increasing number of people labour intensively to make machines superior to humans in every conceivable way. These optimists promote AI's astonishing potential by falsely attributing human-like creative capabilities, sentience, and intelligence to machines. The AI race is not only a pursuit of unimaginable wealth and power but also a reconfirmation of our progress toward absolute mastery over other life forms—advancing us into a stage of the Anthropocene where humans become the ultimate 'masters and possessors' of nature through machines. In this talk, I will offer an alternative perspective on AI hype and technological progress by showcasing critical and absurdist artistic appropriations that repurpose existing fictional characters and universes to create a dialogue with our everyday reality.

The generative animations I present appropriate fictional worlds and characters created by authors such as Stanisław Lem, the Strugatsky brothers, Velimir Khlebnikov, Caspar David Friedrich, Jean-Luc Godard and others. These imagined universes are remixed in a manner comparable to how Large Language Models (LLMs) write stories. The aesthetics of my films deliberately mirror machine-made art—cold, indifferent, and mechanical in their approach to rendering stories, imagery and audio. They embrace system errors, nuanced machine creativity and absurdist generative storytelling.

In my recent animation "Algodreams" (2023), I employed multiple machine learning platforms to generate animations, stories, and voiceovers. The project (un)critically examines AI systems' creative contributions by crediting machines in multiple filmmaking roles: screenplay, music, sound, animation, and voice acting. Algodreams represents the culmination of approaches found in my other generative works, serving as a time capsule that captures both the current state and limitations of AI technologies. I will conclude by sharing two projects that offer alternative perspectives on machine authorship: one incorporating AI as a tool for image-making in Indigenous animated stories, and another exploring the use of hyperreal and photorealistic synthography that employs AI-generated characters as lead actors in a new film.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2025
EventImagining Reality: Symposium on synthography and artificial photorealistic imaging - School of Creative Media, Hong Kong, China
Duration: 7 Mar 20258 Mar 2025
https://www.cityu.edu.hk/scm/imagine/programme/

Conference

ConferenceImagining Reality
Country/TerritoryChina
CityHong Kong
Period7/03/258/03/25
Internet address

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