Creative Technologies & History of Art and Visual Culture present a guest lecture by Nora Khan as part of Creative Interventions: A Colloquium in Arts, Design, and Media.
Discernment: Generative Images, Synthetic Media and Evolving Critical Impulse
What can criticism offer us in a world of unruly generative images and synthetic media? What precise language might we use for machine learning’s impact, or the wake of an algorithm? How must our practices of discernment and the critical impulse evolve in response to computational developments, to perhaps be more resilient and responsive?
This talk invites one to consider how our language might move with ‘intelligent’ systems and beings that simulate liveness and likeness. To navigate a present and future dominated by synthetic media, and created by predictive systems, we take up a practice of seeing through systems. This talk first explores the craft of developing a hybrid, strategic, collective and dissident criticism of technology. It second reviews cases of baffling, seemingly inarticulable experiences from early software experiments and artists’ interventions, into AI/ML. Third, it explores the evolution of language in response to material and symbolic systems that dramatically shape our creative approaches and cognition. Throughout, the talk explores evolving critical methods that help us better situate ourselves to identify a vast range of hidden fictions and beliefs about what technology is meant to do and be.
Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Time: 11:40am – 1:15pm
Location: DARC 108, or online