Is AI Art Net Art?

In this exploratory discussion, we examine how we imagine and frame these systems today. We also look to Internet Art, a movement anchored in critique and resistance, to find paths relevant to critical artistic engagement with AI.

Program

11:00 am Introduction Eryk Salvaggio

11:10 am Presentation Vladan Joler

11:30 am Presentation Valentina Tanni

11:50 am Presentation Eryk Salvaggio

12:10 pm Break (10min)

12:20 pm Discussion & Sense-making Panel & Attendees

1:00 pm Finish

Chair: Eryk Salvaggio, Artist in Residence, Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History, Machine Visual Culture Research Group

Vladan Joler is an academic, researcher and artist whose work blends data investigations, counter cartography, investigative journalism, writing, data visualization, critical design, and numerous other disciplines. He explores and visualizes different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labor exploitation, invisible infrastructures, and many other contemporary phenomena in the intersection between technology and society. In 2018, in cooperation with Kate Crawford, he published Anatomy of an AI System, a large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labor, data, and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo. His previous investigation Facebook Algorithmic Factory included deep forensic investigations and visual mapping of the algorithmic processes and forms of exploitation behind the largest social network.

Valentina Tanni is an art historian, curator, and lecturer. Her research is centered on the relationship between art and technology, with a particular focus on internet culture, as in her recent book Exit Reality. Vaporwave, backrooms, weirdcore e altri paesaggi oltre la soglia (Nero, 2023 - translated into English in 2024). In 2002 she graduated from Sapienza University of Rome with a thesis on Net Art. She was among the founders of Exibart and Artribune, the most influential online art and culture magazines in Italy. In 2001 she also founded Random, one of the first web columns entirely dedicated to Net Art. She has curated numerous new media art exhibitions, including: Maps and Legends. When Photography Met the Web (Rome, 2010), Hit the Crowd. Photography in the Age of Crowdsourcing (Rome, 2012), Nothing to See Here (Milan, 2013), Eternal September (Ljubljana, 2014), Stop and Go. The Art of Animated Gifs (Rome, 2016; Ljubljana, 2018). She currently teaches Digital Media Culture and Meme Culture and Aesthetics at John Cabot University in Rome.

Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. A blend of hacker, researcher, designer and artist, he has been published in academic journals, spoken at music and film festivals, and consulted on tech policy at the national level. He is a researcher on AI, art and education at the metaLab (at) Harvard University, an artist in residence at the Max Planck Institute’s Machine Visual Culture Research Group, and a writing fellow at Tech Policy Press.

Scientific Organization: Eryk Salvaggio, Leonardo Impett

_{Image: A composite image combining diagrams from the 1960 Mark I Perceptron operator's manual and a 1969 Arpanet map of the Internet. Source images Public Domain as works of the United States Government.}