Andreas Broechman
No. 124 - winter 2020

Inordinate Images.
On the machine aesthetics of AI-based art


The current rush of attention to technologies of “artificial intelligence” (AI), ranging from governmental funding programmes to advertising campaigns for consumer products and mainstream movies, is indicative of a fundamental concern about the societal repercussions of an, as yet, confusing technoscientific development.1 The art world participates in this discourse through a flurry of exhibitions and public debates, with a noticeable emphasis on the technical and the social, rather than the particular aesthetic and artistic aspects, placing an awkward and, at times, playful or dilettante-like focus on the technical medium. Art criticism perpetuates this tendency when it highlights the societal concerns instead of engaging with the artworks and their aesthetic affordances.

This text argues that works of so-called AI Art deserve, and require, critical scrutiny not only as reflections on a technical paradigm, but as artworks in their own right. Artworks should not be held accountable to “understanding AI,” or offer insights into the functioning or social meaning of its technical supports. Rather, they develop their own scenarios, projecting their own rules and raising their own, hard questions. Take, as an example, Seiko Mikami’s installation Desire of Codes (2010).2 Its main components are a set of robotic arms that investigates the bodies of individual visitors, and an entire wall of small, camera-equipped robotic LED units that follow the visitors like a swarm of clicking lights. The video footage taken by these two components is fed into a kaleidoscopic projection where images of current visitors are mixed with those of visitors from


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Seiko Mikami, Desire of Codes, 2010. Installation view with Six Multi Perspective Search Arms and Wriggling Wall Units. Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Photo: Ryuichi Maruo.
Seiko Mikami, Desire of Codes, 2010. Installation view with Compound Eye Detector Screen. Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Photo: Ryuichi Maruo
Jake Elwes, Machine Learning Porn, 2016. Digital video, 12 min loop. © Jake Elwes. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.