Towards a Philosophy of Post-creative Practices? – Reading Obvious' “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy”

As an emerging experimental subfield of AI in general, artificial creativity—that is, acts of creativity performed (semi-)autonomously by algorithmic/software robots—poses a particular set of problems. Most notably, computational/artificial creativity conflicts with the anthropocentric ways in which we have historically invented ‘creativity’ as something uniquely and quintessentially human; hence the term ‘post-creative’. Yet, when seeking to replicate the kinds of activities (or products) that we are prone to label ‘creative’, we often tend to forget the contingencies of the ‘creativity dispositif’ (Reckwitz 2017) and its contested and conflictual character. This amnesia includes the ways in which labelling something as ‘creative/not’ also, perhaps even primarily, is an aesthetic judgement—either in the traditional sense of philosophical aesthetics, or in the new (Ngai 2012)—rather than merely an ontological statement. To this end, the paper discusses how theories of how art comes into being (sociology of art, the institutional as well as the anti-essentialist theories of art) might have relevance to the issue of creativity as well. Using the recent, heavily debated auctioning of the AI generated painting, “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy” (by Obvious, 2018) as a case this paper will discuss how research into simulating creativity as a productive human activity will have to address not only the new challenges this phenomenon poses, but also some of the older aporias that have long marked our theoretical dealings with the concept ‘creativity’.

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Jan Løhmann Stephensen

Conference

Publication date: June 2019

Publication date (Print): June 2019

Pages: 21-30

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[0001]Department of Culture and Communication

Aarhus University

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/POM19.4

SO-VID: 2646ab59-8b2f-4a8a-a8e2-15e532a3b461

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Politics of the Machine Beirut 2019

Conference acronym: POM2019

Conference number: 2

Conference location: Beirut, Lebanon

Conference date: 11-14 June 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Politics of the Machine

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM19.4

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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H.S. Becker 1974 Art as Collective Action American Sociological Review 39 6 767 776
M.A. Boden 2010 The Turing test and artistic creativity Kybernetes 39 3 409 413
L. BoltanskiA. Esquerre 2016 The Economic Life of Things: Commodities, Collectibles, Assets New Left Review 98 31 54
L. BoltanskiA. Esquerre 2017 Enrichment, Profit, Critique: A Rejoinder to Nancy Fraser New Left Review 106 67 76
J. Bolter 2019 The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media Cambridge, Mass MIT Press
M. Boscagli 2014 Stuff Theory: Everyday Objects, Radical Materialism New York Bloomsbury
P. Bourdieu 1993 The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature New York Columbia University Press
P. Bourdieu 1996 The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field Cambridge Polity Press
P. Bürger 1984 Theory of the Avant-Garde Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
D. CooleS. Frost 2010 New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics Durham Duke University Press
A. Danto 1964 The Artworld The Journal of Philosophy 61 19 571 584
N. DavisC.-P. HsiaoY. PopovaB. Magerko 2015 An Enactive Model of Creativity for Computational Collaboration and Co-Creation N. ZagaloP. Branco Creativity in the Digital Age London Springer
T. De Duve 1996 Kant after Duchamp Cambridge, Mass MIT Press
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G. Dickie 1971 Aesthetics: An Introduction Indianapolis Pegasus
R. DolphijnI. van der Tuin 2012 New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies Ann Arbor Open Humanities Press
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M. Weitz 1956 The Role of Theory in Aesthetics The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 27 35
W. Welsch 2009 Aesthetics Beyond Aesthetics F. HalsallJ. JansenT. O’Connor Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice Stanford Stanford University Press
R. WilliamsM.A. RuncoE. Berlow 2016 Mapping the Themes, Impact, and Cohesion of Creativity Research over the Last 25 Years Creativity Research Journal 28 4 385 394
M. Woodmansee 1984 The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author' Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 4 425 448

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] J. Bardzell 2007 Creativity in Amateur Multimedia: Popular Culture, Critical Theory, and CHI Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments 3 1 12 33

[2] H.S. Becker 1974 Art as Collective Action American Sociological Review 39 6 767 776

[3] M.A. Boden 2010 The Turing test and artistic creativity Kybernetes 39 3 409 413

[4] L. BoltanskiA. Esquerre 2016 The Economic Life of Things: Commodities, Collectibles, Assets New Left Review 98 31 54

[5] L. BoltanskiA. Esquerre 2017 Enrichment, Profit, Critique: A Rejoinder to Nancy Fraser New Left Review 106 67 76

[6] J. Bolter 2019 The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media Cambridge, Mass MIT Press

[7] M. Boscagli 2014 Stuff Theory: Everyday Objects, Radical Materialism New York Bloomsbury

[8] P. Bourdieu 1993 The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature New York Columbia University Press

[9] P. Bourdieu 1996 The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field Cambridge Polity Press

[10] P. Bürger 1984 Theory of the Avant-Garde Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press

[11] D. CooleS. Frost 2010 New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics Durham Duke University Press

[12] A. Danto 1964 The Artworld The Journal of Philosophy 61 19 571 584

[13] N. DavisC.-P. HsiaoY. PopovaB. Magerko 2015 An Enactive Model of Creativity for Computational Collaboration and Co-Creation N. ZagaloP. Branco Creativity in the Digital Age London Springer

[14] T. De Duve 1996 Kant after Duchamp Cambridge, Mass MIT Press

[15] T. De Duve 2012 Why Kant got it Right B. ErikssonJ. LundH.K. NielsenB.S. Pedersen Æstetisering – forbindelser og forskelle Aarhus Klim

[16] G. Dickie 1971 Aesthetics: An Introduction Indianapolis Pegasus

[17] R. DolphijnI. van der Tuin 2012 New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies Ann Arbor Open Humanities Press

[18] E. Drott 2019 Music AI: Copyright, Compensation, Commons Unpublished paper from Music and AI-seminar at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies Aarhus University arranged by Georgina Born May 2019

[19] T. Eagleton 1990 The Ideology of the Aesthetic Oxford Blackwell

[20] D. Ericsson 2001 Creative Leaders – or prisoners of the past S-E. SjöstrandJ. SandbergM. Tyrstrup Invisible Management: The Social Construction of Leadership London Thomson Learning

[21] M. Foucault 1977 The Confession of the Flesh (Interview) C. Gordon Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings New York Pantheon Book

[22] M. Foucault 2003 Nietzsche, Genealogy, History P. RabinowN. Rose The Essential Foucault New York & London The New Press

[23] N. FoxP. Alldred 2017 Creativity -Imagination, Social Production and Social Change Sociology and the New Materialism: Theory, Research, Action London Sage

[24] B. Godin 2015 Innovation Contested: The Idea of Innovation over the Centuries New York Routledge

[25] Y.N. Harari 2014 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind London Harvill Secker

[26] T. Ingold 2013 Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture New York Routledge

[27] I. Kant 1914 1790 Kant’s Critique of Judgement London Macmillan

[28] R. Kurzweil 2005 The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology London Penguin Group

[29] M. Kyndrup 2018 Aesthetics and Judgement: ‘Why Kant got it Right The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 26 54 75 85

[30] B. Latour 2005 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory Oxford Oxford University Press

[31] L. Lessig 2004 Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity New York Penguin

[32] L. Lessig 2008 Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy New York

[33] K. Marx 1967 Writings of the young Marx on Philosophy and Society Anchor Books, New York Penguin

[34] K. Marx 2010 1894 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy New York International Publishers

[35] J.H. Mason 2003 The Value of Creativity: The Origin and Emergence of a Modern Belief Aldershot Ashgate

[36] Y. Michaud 1998 The End of the Utopia of Art B. MariJ-M. Schaeffer Think art: theory and practice in the art of today Rotterdam Witte de With

[37] D. Miller 2010 Stuff Cambridge Polity Press

[38] S. Ngai 2012 Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting Cambridge, Mass Harvard University Press

[39] Obvious 2018 Obvious, explained Medium Feb 14 2018 https://medium.com/@hello.obvious/ai-the-rise-of-a-new-art-movement-f6efe0a51f2e

[40] A. Reckwitz 2017 The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and the Culture of the New Cambridge Polity Press

[41] M. Rhodes 1961 An Analysis of Creativity The Phi Delta Kappan 42 7 305 310

[42] J. Roberts 2007 The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade London Verso

[43] M.A. Runco 2014 Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice San Diego Academic Press

[44] L. Shiner 2001 The Invention of Art: A Cultural History Chicago The University of Chicago Press

[45] R. Shusterman 2012 Back to the Future: Aesthetics Today The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 43 104 125

[46] M. Solly 2018 Christie’s Will Be the First Auction House to Sell Art Made by Artificial Intelligence Smithsonian Magazine August 21 2018 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/christies-will-be-first-auction-house-sell-art-made-artificial-intelligence-180970086/#pfIhccwS0PI1TC1d.99

[47] J.L. Stephensen 2015a Talking the Creative Economy into Being: Performative Economics, Knowledge, and Creativity M. Thorup Intellectual History of Economic Normativities New York Palgrave

[48] J.L. Stephensen 2015b Towards a Digital Materialism Conjunctions: Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation 2 2 154 171

[49] R. Towse 2010 Creativity, Copyright and the Creative Industries Paradigm Kyklos 63 2 461 478

[50] J. Vincent 2018 How Three French Students Used Borrowed Code to Put the First AI Portrait in Christie’s The Verge Oct 23 2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/18013190/ai-art-portrait-auction-christies-belamy-obvious-robbie-barrat-gans

[51] V. Vinge 1993 The coming technological singularity: How to survive in the post-human era Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace Westlake, Ohio NASA Lewis Research Center 11 22

[52] M. Weitz 1956 The Role of Theory in Aesthetics The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 27 35

[53] W. Welsch 2009 Aesthetics Beyond Aesthetics F. HalsallJ. JansenT. O’Connor Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice Stanford Stanford University Press

[54] R. WilliamsM.A. RuncoE. Berlow 2016 Mapping the Themes, Impact, and Cohesion of Creativity Research over the Last 25 Years Creativity Research Journal 28 4 385 394

[55] M. Woodmansee 1984 The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author' Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 4 425 448

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