This event is now fully booked, please email researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk to join the waiting list.
Ai-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic artist robot. A pioneer of AI art, she brings Donna Haraway’s cyborg into focus, developing art into tomorrow’s world. Come and meet Ai-Da at The Courtauld, and learn about her art and practice. During the evening, Ai-Da will talk about her aims as an artist, followed by a poetry recital of poems she’s written inspired by British art in the war years from the Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection. Come and see several of her artworks on display, and learn why a self-portrait by a humanoid with no ‘self’ is so acutely relevant to our lives and societies today. Project Director Aidan Meller will describe Ai-Da’s remarkable journey since she burst onto the artworld scene in 2019, and explain why AI art is one of the most useful ways of critiquing and reflecting on the rapid changes new technologies are bringing.
Ai-Da addresses the question of creativity. Professor Margaret Boden states: “Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising, and valuable”. Under this definition, Ai-Da is creative – what does it mean for our self-evaluation when Ai-Da, a machine robot, creates drawings and art? Her work considers current tensions, such as environmental degradation, Ai-Da aims to get us re-formulating absurdly, reminiscent of Dada. She is intriguing in light of Baudrillard’s real, unreal and hyperreal arguments, and she challenges us to consider the problem of existence.
As Aldous Huxley’s Brave New challenges knock on our door, Ai-Da aims to remind us that new technologies bring power. In human hands, this power is at risk of being abused – something we collectively need to watch out for and guard against. Through art, Ai-Da takes the space to re-imagine our futures with us all.
Organised by Dr Natalia Murray, Lecturer in Modern Art and Curating, The Courtauld.
Ai-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic AI robot artist. As an AI machine, her artist persona IS the artwork, along with her drawings, performance art and collaborative paintings and sculptures. As conceptual art, Ai-Da encourages us to re-consider our self-perception through the lens of a humanoid. Extraordinarily complex, our online worlds are pushed and pulled by forces and powers that are sometimes apparent but largely oblique. Ai-Da highlights those tensions: is she an artist in her own right? Is she an avatar, or a fictional character? These considerations bring to the forefront the questions coming up rapidly in our future.
