Artificial Intelligence and the Arts

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2024) | Viewed by 5436

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Marketing and Communication, IU University of Applied Sciences, 53604 Bad Honnef, Germany
Interests: artificial intelligence and the arts
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Cultural Management and Media, University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, Munich, Germany
Interests: sociology of arts; science and technology studies; artificial intelligence; artificial creativity; artistic practice; human-machine interaction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the creative landscape. This Special Issue aims to explore the use of AI in the arts with a focus on human and AI collaboration along the entire value chain, from the creation of art to its mediation, distribution, preservation, and perception (human response). We are seeking original research papers, reviews, theoretical papers, as well as a wide range of case studies and methodologies, to foster diverse discussion of this evolving field.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to)

  • Creation and production process
    • Human and AI creative collaboration.
    • AI-generated art and its impact on aesthetics.
    • AI-driven narrative generation and storytelling.
    • The use of AI-powered tools in artistic practice and its implications.
    • The ethical and legal considerations of AI-generated art.
  • Mediation, distribution, preservation
    • AI's influence on art curation and recommendation systems.
    • The use of AI in art exhibitions and installations.
    • The role of AI in preserving and restoring artworks.
  • Perception and consumption
    • The psychology of human perception in evaluating AI-created art.
    • The influence of AI on taste, cultural consumption, and aesthetic diversity.
    • A theoretical frameworks for understanding the role of AI in the arts.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Francisco Tigre Moura
Dr. Mariya Dzhimova
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • artificial creativity
  • co-creation
  • arts
  • music
  • creativity

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

12 pages, 243 KiB  
Article
Calculated Randomness, Control and Creation: Artistic Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
by Mariya Dzhimova and Francisco Tigre Moura
Arts 2024, 13(5), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050152 - 2 Oct 2024
Viewed by 559
Abstract
The recent emergence of generative AI, particularly prompt-based models, and its embedding in many social domains and practices has revived the notion of co-creation and distributed agency already familiar in art practice and theory. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its central notion [...] Read more.
The recent emergence of generative AI, particularly prompt-based models, and its embedding in many social domains and practices has revived the notion of co-creation and distributed agency already familiar in art practice and theory. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its central notion of agency, this article explores the extent to which the collaboration between the artist and AI represents a new form of co-creation and distributed agency. It compares AI art with artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, which also challenged the notion of the autonomous artist and her agency by incorporating randomness on the one hand and rule-based systems on the other. In contrast, artistic practice with AI can be described as an iterative process of creative feedback loops, oscillating between order and disorder, (calculated) randomness and calculation, enabling a very specific kind of self-reflection and entanglement with the alienation of one’s own perspective. Furthermore, this article argues that most artistic projects that explore and work with AI are, in their own specific way, a demonstration of hybridity and entanglement, as well as the distribution of agency between the human and the non-human, and can thus be described as a network phenomenon. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)
20 pages, 1436 KiB  
Article
The Distributed Authorship of Art in the Age of AI
by Paul Goodfellow
Arts 2024, 13(5), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050149 - 30 Sep 2024
Viewed by 427
Abstract
The distribution of authorship in the age of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) suggests a taxonomic system that places art objects along a spectrum in terms of authorship: from pure human creation, which draws directly from the interior world of affect, emotions [...] Read more.
The distribution of authorship in the age of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) suggests a taxonomic system that places art objects along a spectrum in terms of authorship: from pure human creation, which draws directly from the interior world of affect, emotions and ideas, through to co-evolved works created with tools and collective production and finally to works that are largely devoid of human involvement. Human and machine production can be distinguished in terms of motivation, with human production being driven by consciousness and the processing of subjective experience and machinic production being driven by algorithms and the processing of data. However, the expansion of AI entangles the artist in ever more complex webs of production and dissemination, whereby the boundaries between the work of the artist and the work of the networked technologies are increasingly distributed and obscured. From this perspective, AI-generated works are not solely the products of an independent machinic agency but operate in the middle of the spectrum of authorship between human and machine, as they are the consequences of a highly distributed model of production that sit across the algorithms and the underlying information systems and data that support them and the artists who both contribute and extract value. This highly distributed state further transforms the role of the artist from the creator of objects containing aesthetic and conceptual potential to the translator and curator of such objects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)
Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 2561 KiB  
Article
A Machine Walks into an Exhibit: A Technical Analysis of Art Curation
by Thomas Şerban von Davier, Laura M. Herman and Caterina Moruzzi
Arts 2024, 13(5), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050138 - 31 Aug 2024
Viewed by 879
Abstract
Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and [...] Read more.
Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and financial benefits. The Algorithmic Pedestal was a gallery, practice-based research project that reported gallerygoers’ perceptions of a human’s curation and curation achieved by Instagram’s algorithm. This paper presents a technical analysis of the same exhibit using computer vision code, offering insights into machines’ perception of visual art. The computer vision code assigned values on various metrics to each image, allowing statistical comparisons to identify differences between the collections of images selected by the human and the algorithmic system. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the exhibited images and the broader Metropolitan Museum of Art digital collection. However, the analysis found minimal distinctions between human-curated and Instagram-curated images. This study contributes insights into the perceived value of the curation process, shedding light on how audiences perceive artworks differently from machines using computer vision. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research

27 pages, 445 KiB  
Review
Art Notions in the Age of (Mis)anthropic AI
by Dejan Grba
Arts 2024, 13(5), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050137 - 30 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1734
Abstract
In this paper, I take the cultural effects of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) as a context for examining a broader perspective of AI’s impact on contemporary art notions. After the introductory overview of generative AI, I summarize the distinct but often confused [...] Read more.
In this paper, I take the cultural effects of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) as a context for examining a broader perspective of AI’s impact on contemporary art notions. After the introductory overview of generative AI, I summarize the distinct but often confused aspects of art notions and review the principal lines in which AI influences them: the strategic normalization of AI through art, the representation of AI art in the artworld, academia, and AI research, and the mutual permeability of art and kitsch in the digital culture. I connect these notional factors with the conceptual and ideological substrate of the computer science and AI industry, which blends the machinic agency fetishism, the equalization of computers and humans, the sociotechnical blindness, and cyberlibertarianism. The overtones of alienation, sociopathy, and misanthropy in the disparate but somehow coalescing philosophical premises, technical ideas, and political views in this substrate remain underexposed in AI studies so, in the closing discussion, I outline their manifestations in generative AI and introduce several viewpoints for a further critique of AI’s cultural zeitgeist. They add a touch of skepticism to pondering how technological trends change our understanding of art and in which directions they stir its social, economic, and political roles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)
Back to TopTop