Digital Art Conferences
As a proffessionist and teacher, my interest lies in addressing social changes through the creative use of media. My approach to digital technology focuses on the pursuit of interdisciplinary multimedia aesthetics. As a professor, I am interested in describing society through technological media and contemporary languages that allow for the exploration of new expressive dimensions. Below is a list of some conferences I have conducted.
November 7, 2024, I will present my new lecture on the theme ‘Design in the Era of the Digital Revolution’ at the prestigious venue of the DAD – Department of Architecture and Design of Genoa.
The digital era is radically transforming the world, as our living spaces become increasingly filled with objects that make the relationship between humans and the functions of these objects more intangible.
11 June and13 June, at 1.30 pm, two appointments at the Academy of Fine Arts Genoa, with a lesson on the origin of AI Aestethics. Origin and cultural impact on Contemporary Society, is it the end or the beginning of a new World?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have a substantial and multifaceted impact on human creativity, with both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, AI will offer artists and creatives new tools and techniques to explore new creative territories and reach unprecedented levels of complexity and precision. On the other hand, AI may also lead to a devaluation of the subjective value of art, as machines increase their ability to create original works that reflect human creativity. One of the main areas where AI will influence human creativity is through simplifying creative processes. Through machine learning and data analysis, AI will be able to analyze vast amounts of content and identify patterns and trends, supporting artists in their creation and realization of original ideas. Furthermore, AI may also provide artists with new tools to create highly sophisticated and engaging works of art, such as generative art.
Another significant impact of AI on human creativity will be the expansion of the talent pool. As AI makes creative tools and techniques more accessible, a wider range of people will be able to participate in artistic creation, encouraging a more diverse range of voices and perspectives in the arts. However, AI may also raise important issues around intellectual property and the value of art. As machines increase their ability to create original works, the subjective value of art may decrease, raising questions about who owns the intellectual property rights of machine-generated content. Additionally, a secondary market for AI-generated art may emerge, raising questions about how to evaluate its quality and value.
Finally, AI may also lead to a decrease in demand for human creativity, as machines can create original content at a lower cost than their human counterparts. This could lead to a decrease in demand for creative talents, increasing competition for a limited number of job opportunities and creative outlets. AI will have a substantial impact on human creativity, offering artists and creatives new tools and techniques to explore new creative territories and reach unprecedented levels of complexity and precision. However, AI will also raise important ethical and socioeconomic issues that must be addressed to ensure that human individuals continue to play a central role in the global creative landscape.
Is it the end or the beginning of a new World?
June 13, at 1:30 PM, the final session of the 2024 digital art course will take place at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa, focusing on the topic “Origin of AI Aesthetics: Origin and Cultural Impact on Contemporary Society.”
The digital art course in computer art at the academy of art was founded by me in 2018; it is one of the first in Europe to tackle the theme of digital art aesthetics with a permanent integration of the historical context of the digital revolution. At school, we have also studied the history of the industrial revolution since 2018, and the course addresses a relevant reflective discussion on the impact of technology on humans, not only in work but also in aesthetics, and from a humanistic, social, and cultural perspective. Our aim is to connect the dots between the delicate ecosystem of past, present, and future, asking where we are going? Is this the end of humanism, are we entering post-humanism?
Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence: A Journey from Emergence to Evolution Since the dawn of computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has inspired a series of discussions on its aesthetics – that is, how AI appears and functions, and how it impacts our understanding of art, creativity, and beauty. In its early days, the aesthetics of AI primarily consisted of simple and minimalist user interfaces since researchers focused on developing AI’s basic functionalities. However, over the years, the aesthetics of AI evolved, becoming an integral part of almost every aspect of our daily lives and influencing our understanding of beauty, art, and reality. Over the past two decades, AI aesthetics underwent a dramatic transformation, with increasingly sophisticated machine learning techniques and user-centered design adoption. This evolution allowed AI to seamlessly integrate into our smart devices, applications, and services, shaping our daily experiences and becoming indispensable in various aspects of our lives.
Today, AI aesthetics focus heavily on harmoniously blending appealing designs, intuitive functionality, and highly sophisticated artificial intelligence. As AI continues to evolve, we can expect AI aesthetics to adapt accordingly, meeting ever-changing user needs and desires while setting new standards for human-machine interaction and redefining the boundaries of what is possible. I will discuss it today at the final digital art course 2024 session at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa.
The fact that today we are intergenerational connected implies that the internet is not just a media, but the media, in fact we use it indoors as well as outdoors, the internet accompanies us from the beginning of the day to the end. In a constant rhythm of “virtuality” today we are all content creators in our own way, we all have a social network, social networks have replaced commercial television, and we ourselves have become not only users but also sellers.
The Internet has also spawned a number of mass subcultures, such as glitch art. vaporwave, meme, which have increased its aesthetic, the aesthetic of the internet, which means a space filled with generic data, popular concepts and user-generated images often of poor quality, using inspirational images or the same images without copyright , generating a bulimic copy-and-paste loop of digital junk, which drowns out relevant content. So much so that to give voice to news and content you have to pay for the services, just as a TV charges for advertising space. But what are these contents like? What is their aesthetic? Before there was Beeple, there was William Shatner.
In July 2021, the “Star Trek” actor, singer and author created a series of trading cards featuring images from his career: a telegram from a producer, a photo from his first modeling shoot, an X-ray of his teeth – and listed them as unique digital tokens for sale online. Within nine minutes, the entire run of 125,000 tokens sold out, for around $1 each. At the time it seemed like a lot of money for digital artifacts with no real-world value. Now, not so much. Known as NFTs, such tokens have taken off in recent weeks in what can be called an ecologically destructive speculative bubble or a promising new funding model for art and media, depending on who you ask.
Subsequently, a digital collage by graphic artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, was sold at Christie’s auction for $69 million. The auction house declared Winkelmann “among the three most valuable living artists”. In 2023 NFTs have a significant value on the market, today they are moribund and perhaps ready to be resurrected, in a market that increasingly focuses on digital and in which the videogame industry is in first place, the dream of the metaverse does not cease to exist, what will be the fate of the economy? and art? But why did we get to this? Is NFT the art we deserve? ephemeral, simple and devoid of content? I will discuss it at the digital art session at the Art Academy Ligustica.
Being of a certain age, 42 years from now, while I write these words on a digital sheet, I have seen a varied path of technologies, which have made me think of the concept of digital art, however many of these today are obsolete, outdated technologies, which also if connected to the term digital art or electronics they actually belong to the context of multimedia art.Talking about glitch art today has a significant value, as it determines a responsibility for correct documentation and cataloging of the phenomenon, both artistic and artistic, because living today in a digital era, we are perpetually and constantly inundated with digital content, images shared on the web, stolen manipulated filtered, like these images even the glitch aesthetic has been distorted from its original location, altered by filters, plugins, image libraries that have transformed the aesthetic value of the digital error, from its original location, i.e. the error, to that of art and ultimately aesthetics, obviously when a concept becomes popular we witness its most radical transformation and this also happened for Glitch Art. So how can you distinguish art from emulation? So what is glitch art?It is not possible to draw a correct definition between what is art and what is not, however it is possible to define some styles on the basis of the year of production and cultural context, considering that what happened after at the end of the 2000s surpassed the point of no return, that is, it no longer has a real meaning of cultural, artistic and activist belonging, but is placed in a form of aesthetics, as happened to the culture of pop art, which from a criticism of consumerism has transformed into a model of consumerism itself.
The term Glitch it is associated with a technical problem, a digital error, in aesthetics is made by either “capturing” an image of a glitch as it randomly happens, or more often by artists/designers manipulating their digital files, software or hardware to produce these “errors.” Artists have posted a variety of tutorials online explaining how to make glitch art. There are many approaches to making these glitches happen on demand, ranging from physical changes to the hardware to direct alterations of the digital files themselves. But what is true glitch aesthetics in a digitally controlled way? Where everything is available, everything is fake, everything has a tutorial? I will try to discuss it in this second appointment.
Although the first digital art experiences date back to the 1980s, its roots can be traced back to the 1960s with artists such as Frieder Nake, the group EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), and Allan Kaprow exploring the relationship of man and machine in the artistic realm and, especially the latter, envisioning a world of unbounded communication and interconnectedness. Similarly, in the 1970s pioneering video artist Nam June Paik envisioned a future of boundaryless communication and coined the iconic expression “electronic superhighway.” It was in the early 1980s, however, that an artist Harald Cohen with a group of engineerings invented a paint program named AARON: a robotic machine designed to make large drawings on the sheet of paper placed on the floor. Initially, the machine was creating abstract drawings, then those turned more representational over time and the machine was able to imitate shapes from nature. In the ’90s, AARON also started to implement color to the drawings. Even though Cohen was always very careful not to claim AARON’s creativity but rather his own, considering the machine just as a tool for his own expression, his program is now considered as a harbinger of what we know today as Artificial Intelligence.
Pixel art is a form of digital art drawn with graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers, arcade machines and video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as LED displays and graphing calculators, which have a limited number of pixels and colors available. The art form is still employed to this day by pixel artists and game studios, even though the technological limitations have since been surpassed.
Most works of pixel art are also restrictive both in file size and the number of colors used in their color palette because of software limitations to achieve a certain aesthetic or simply to reduce the perceived noise. Older forms of pixel art tend to employ smaller palettes, with some video games being made using just two colors (1-bit color depth). Because of these self imposed limitations, pixel art presents strong similarities with many traditional restrictive art forms such as mosaics, cross-stitch and fuse beads.
Concepts such as communication, multimedia, interfaces, virtuality, the metaverse, automation, and artificial intelligence have become reference points for contemporary designers, just as they are for everyone else. This scenario is now part of a common language and shared experience for all, in terms of consumption. However, from a design perspective, designers must take into account the context that surrounds them—a context that is becoming less physical and increasingly digitalized.
Today’s designer must possess a different set of skills, including technical expertise, ethical and social awareness, cultural knowledge, and the ability to use (prompts for) AI effectively. They need to have an open mind to embrace the role of technology in an ergonomic and functional digital environment. The role of the designer should be interdisciplinary, but above all, it must be a social role, one that is useful, because it will face challenges never encountered before, such as climate change, the cost of raw materials, energy, pollution, and digitalization, which will make the product increasingly less physical, leaving no room for the ephemeral and waste in the real context. (Professor Cesare Bignotti)