Machine Visual Culture: Artificial Intelligence and the History of Seeing

Leonardo Impett, Ph.D.

The Machine Visual Culture research group investigates the reciprocal relationship between artificial intelligence and visual culture, focusing on how AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems both shape and are shaped by histories of seeing. Combining digital art history with critical AI studies, the group explores AI not only as a technological tool but also as a cultural phenomenon with important implications for the humanities.

Our research project has two central axes. First, it situates AI within art history, examining how neural networks and other AI technologies encode cultural assumptions, visual ideologies, and epistemological frameworks. This includes studying the biases and representational practices embedded in AI training datasets and neural architectures, as well as the broader historical and theoretical contexts that underpin these systems. Second, the project develops and applies AI techniques to investigate the history of art and visual culture at new levels of scale and complexity: opening up new practical and theoretical avenues for art historical research while critically examining the assumptions and epistemologies embedded in these technologies.

By bridging these two perspectives, Machine Visual Culture offers an interdisciplinary approach that positions AI as both a subject of cultural critique and a transformative approach to art historical research, documenting a pivotal moment in the cultural history of AI.