The End of Genius? Art and Artificial Intelligence
A noticeable trend in art currently involves the attempt to come to terms with new technologies, with artificial intelligence and robotics. The opera star Andrea Bocelli had himself directed by a humanoid. For the play Uncanny Valley, the theatre collective Rimini Protokoll created an animatronic double of the author Thomas Melle, which resembles the original to an astonishing degree. And a Chinese smart phone manufacturer made headlines by using artificial intelligence to complete Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” organizing a London premiere of the result. Marina Abramovic exhibits herself as a hologram. Things that once to resided in the realm of fantasy can now become fully real. The artist is a genius, and hence irreplaceable – but that could change. There are already concrete instances: a portrait of Edmond de Belamy created by artificial intelligence was sold at Christie’s auction house in New York for $432,500.00 – more than 40 times its appraised value. Its creator: a computer program. Behind this coup was the artist’s collective Obvious. Now, there is a debate about precisely who the artist is: after all, it was Obvious that made use of the AI program. All of which tells us much about the likely appearance of the art of the future. But what some people regard as revolutionary is seen by others as gimmicky, kitschy even dangerous. For the growing deployment of the new technologies in culture threatens to eliminate the artist altogether. But how much robotics can art tolerate? After all, it remains an expression of human experience, an attempt to explore the human condition. Can a machine insert itself as an independent protagonist into the intricate process that is required for the creation of a work of art?
