Abstracts

Jytte Holmqvist (Bio)

Ars vivendi 2025?

Art - creativity - uniqueness - clever contribution to a world where the artist is given agency as a voice of reason in a world that still needs illuminating and being shown the way forward.

How do we salvage the human in a world of artificiality? When asked about the rapid overtaking of AI and the potential replacement of human creativity by an AI machinery where we are currently feeding the monster the ideas it needs to take over and make us ultimately redundant, Jodie Foster argues that "[m]achines have the references of all our human experiences".

In a world of (already) AI assistance, interference, and potential overtaking at a time of perfection where the perfect is but an illusion, and anything but "perfectly imperfect", what is the purpose of art and who (should be) the artist? We are used to fast and easy consumption, of copycats and readily available texts and artworks, and are being engulfed by the AI tidal wave at breakneck speed. In these circumstances, what role should art and the arts play and does true art have a space to explore in a post-postmodern society that celebrates the pastiche, a fusion of styles, and the fragmentary; a patchwork of styles in order to sensationalistically reach out to contemporary audiences?

This paper draws on Bauman and argues for the absolute importance of contemporary artists to take agency as truth tellers in their own right who show the way in the darkness of artificial competition, and declares that it is absolutely necessary for us to embrace creativity, become conscious of issues that need tackling, and prepare ourselves to defeat the AI monster while safeguarding a world that needs human protection. Indeed, art should propose ethical models of behavior but, more than anything, art should protect human creativity and negate and ultimately overturn AI interference.