Universitätsstr. 105
44789 Bochum
Room: UNI 105, 3/26

phone: +49 (0) 234/32-27283
E-Mail: anna.grelik@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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Dissertation title

Art with Artificial Intelligence. Artistic Infrastructures and Documentary Practices (working title)

Project Description

The doctoral project starts from the basic assumption that every artistic work with artificial intelligence (AI) consists of a network of interactions between people, machines, technical infrastructures, cultural institutions, companies, etc. It is important to note that artistic AI works are highly dynamic; their aesthetic manifestations can constantly change – especially due to the productivity of the algorithms. It is important to note that artistic AI works are highly dynamic; their aesthetic manifestations can change constantly – especially due to the productivity of the algorithms.

Therefore, these complex and dynamic relationships of the actors involved are to be described and analysed in their interactions. On the one hand, these manifest themselves in various media forms, such as Youtube or Vimeo videos, interviews on technical topics, literature lists and programmatic data directories, social media posts, links and references to other sites (such as Google or software companies), diagrams, texts, AI-generated results (such as graphics). At the same time, these manifestations in the work or project contexts are to be understood as processes or results of artistic practices and aesthetic designs.

The artistic practices condense or stabilise the documentary character of the work and project contexts with the media forms. The artistic work is thus endowed with an authority of the documentary, which is sometimes very pronounced in the AI artworks as an arc of tension or interplay between withdrawal and excess of the documentary: Thus, the operativity and the processing of the algorithm – in the space of the so-called “black box” – radically eludes representability. Depending on the machine process, even the programmers cannot understand how and why the AI came to certain procedural ‘decisions’.

This is one side of the arc of tension, which consists above all in a withdrawal of the documentary or documentable. But this – according to the observation – goes hand in hand with a sometimes excessive use of documentary practices with regard to what people, institutions, data, media and aesthetic representations etc. are interwoven with the artwork or appear as it. These networks of relationships (specifically as infrastructures) can be seen as dynamic relations that, to the sometimes excessive extent of documentary practices, are supposed to testify and prove that there, in the so-called black box, an algorithm is active that is capable of creating independent artistic image spaces.

Thus, the artistic practices use various qualities of the documentary in their respective webs of relationships – such as evidence, datification, testimonies, film and photo material, etc. – and thus make the human-machine interactions discursive, plausible and reflective.

The dynamics and stabilisation of these networks look different in each artistic AI project. The focus of the investigation is on selected artistic AI works from 2014 to the present, as it can be assumed that the technological innovation of Generative Neural Networks (GAN) developed in June 2014 has a significant influence on the field of the documentable in the context of AI art. Site-specific artworks and audiovisual performances are of particular importance in the context of this investigation. They range from a pronounced aestheticisation of the work’s installation, to projects with great technological effort and strong technical emphasis, to an almost complete congruence of work form and documentary modes.

Scientific career

• Since October 2022: Research assistant (doctorate) at the DFG Research Training Group “The Documentary. Excess and Deprivation”, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• 04/2021 to 09/2022: Research assistant (doctorate) at the Institute for Art History, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
• 10/2018 to 03/2021: Research assistant at the Institute for Art History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
• 03/2018 to 03/2021: Master’s degree in art history, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf
• 10/2017 to 12/2017: Student assistant at the Institute for Art History, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf
• 10/2016 to 12/2016: Student assistant at the Institute for Art History, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
• 07/2015 to 10/2015: Student assistant at the Institute for Art History, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
• 10/2011 to 03/2018 Bachelor’s degree in Art History (KF), German Studies (EF), Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Event organisation and courses

• SoSe 2021:
  “‘What about the Body?’ – School of Experience” – Cooperation with Ben J. Riepe and company (Institute of Art History – Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf)
• WiSe 2021/22:
  On the concept of creativity in contemporary art (Institute for Art History – Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf)
• SoSe 2022:
  A Future for Artificial Creativity? – The Dream of the Creative Machine (Institute for Art History – Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf)
• In the winter semesters 2016/17 – 2019/20:
  Co-supervision and organisation of the event JUNGE NACHT in connection with the project seminar “JUNGE NACHT a cooperation with the Museum Kunstpalast”.
• In the winter semesters 2016/17 – 2019/20:
  Co-supervision and organisation of the event JUNGE NACHT in connection with the project seminar “JUNGE NACHT a cooperation with the Museum Kunstpalast”.

Lectures

• “AI-MAPPING / MAPPING AI – Documentary Operations of Mapping”, Lecture Series “The Documentary V”, (14.12.2023) Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In preparation
• “‘The Environment is not a System’ – Algorithmic Disruptions of the Anthropological Bias”, conference “Zerstresst! Tensions between the Aesthetic and the Political”, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (07.-09.12.2023). Essay in preparation

Other

• Participation in the FOUNDING LAB Summer School assisted by IDSA x ARS ELECTRONICA FOUNDING LAB Facilitators.
  The forum focuses on co-creating knowledge between Fellows and students to address the challenges of an increasingly digital world.

Membership

• German Association for Art History