Generative art made with algorithms has existed since the early days of computing in the 1960s. In recent years, a new strand of generative art has emerged: AI-generated art, which leverages the recent progress of artificial intelligence to create artworks. Unlike old-fashioned generative art, AI-generated art is not produced with an explicit set of programming instructions provided by human artists; instead, it involves training an algorithm on a dataset so that it can later produce artworks (images, music, or video clips) using its own internal parameters that have not been explicitly defined by a human. This process raises fascinating questions at the intersection of computer science, art history, and the philosophy of art. At a superficial level of analysis, AI-generated art seems to offload much of the creative impetus of art production to the machine, requiring minimal intervention from the artist. On closer inspection, however, it involves a novel process of curation at two key stages: upstream in the selection of the dataset on which the algorithm is trained, and downstream in the selection of the outputs that should qualify as artworks. Instead of replacing human artists with computers, AI-generated art can be understood as a new kind of collaboration between mind and machine, both of which contribute to the aesthetic value of the final artwork.
This seminar will bring together AI artists and philosophers to explore the significance of this new mode of art production. It will discuss the implications of AI-generated art for the definition of art, the nature of the relationship between artists and tools, the process of digital curation, and whether AI systems can be as creative as humans.
Event Speakers
- Sougwen Chung, artist and researcher
- Helena Sarin, visual artist
- Anne Spalter, digital mixed-media artist
- Katherine Thomson-Jones, Professor of Philosophy at Oberlin College
- Moderated by Raphaël Millière, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University
Event Information
Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. Registered attendees will receive an event link shortly before the seminar begins.
This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 853-1612 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.
A prominent logician Melvin Fitting has turned 80. This hybrid conference is a special event in his honor.
Melvin Fitting was in the departments of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Lehman College. He is now Professor Emeritus. He has authored 11 books and over a hundred research papers with staggering citation figures. In 2012, Melvin Fitting was given the Herbrand Award by the Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE) for distinguished contributions to the field. In 2019, Professor Fitting received a Doctor Honoris Causa (an Honorary Doctorate) from the University of Bucharest.
Greetings, congratulations, photos for posting, and ZOOM link requests could be sent to Sergei Artemov by sartemov@gmail.com or sartemov@gc.cuny.edu.
Conference website https://sartemov.ws.gc.cuny.edu/fitting-at-80/
Program (the times are given in the Eastern Day Time zone EST). In-person location: CUNY Graduate Center, rm. 3310-B.
January 28, Saturday
8:00-8:45 am Arnon Avron (Tel Aviv), “Breaking the Tie: Benacerraf’s Identification Argument Revisited”
8:45-9:30 am Junhua Yu (Beijing), “Exploring Operators on Neighborhood Models”
9:30-9:45 am Break
9:45-10:30 am Sara Negri (Genoa), “Faithful Modal Embedding: From Gödel to Labelled Calculi”
10:30-11:15 am Heinrich Wansing (Bochum), “Remarks on Semantic Information and Logic. From Semantic Tetralateralism to the Pentalattice 65536_5”
11:15-11:30 am Break
11:30 am -12:15 pm Roman Kuznets (Vienna), “On Interpolation”
12:15-1:00 pm Walter Carnielli (Campinas), “Combining KX4 and S4: A logic that encompasses factive and non-factive evidence“
1:00-1:15 pm Break
1:15-2:00 pm Eduardo Barrio and Federico Pailos (Buenos Aires), “Meta-classical Non-classical Logics”
2:00-2:45 pm Graham Priest (New York), “Jaśkowski and the Jains: a Fitting Tribute”
2:45-4:00 pm Session of memories and congratulations featuring Sergei Artemov, Anil Nerode, Hiroakira Ono, Melvin Fitting, and others.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, and the beginning of a sonic, cultural and socio-political revolution that changed the U.S. and the world. To commemorate the anniversary, Brooklyn Public Library will present NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY: THE PHILOSOPHY OF HIP-HOP on Saturday, June 17th, from 7 pm – 2 am at Central Library.
Join us for this FREE event that will take over the entire Central Library building to celebrate hip-hop culture past, present and future, with keynote addresses, live DJs, film screenings, discussions, debates and contemplative engagements. BPL invites you to celebrate hip-hop and spend a NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY.
Co-curated by LeBrandon Smith and Kelly Harrison. The Dilemma Series is curated by April R. Silver, founder of AKILA WORKSONGS.
Serving as a response to Aimé Césaire’s call for a universal filled with particularity from his infamous resignation from the French Communist Party in 1956, I focus on the role of culture for a project of universal emancipation. To do so, I follow Sylvia Wynter’s statement that the Négritude movement is an example of a universal and cultural project. Recalling Césaire’s words in “Return to My Native Land,” culture that serves universal emancipation must be “free of the desire to tame but familiar with the play of the world.” To this end, I develop a conception of culture that is both local and universal, that centers on the importance of what it means to be human, as life, as being, and as experience by reading culture as necessarily local, collective, disenchanted, and related to play.
Bio:
Elisabeth Paquette is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her book, titled Universal Emancipation: Race beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), engages French political theorist Alain Badiou’s discussion of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution to develop a nuanced critique of his theory of emancipation. Currently, she is working on a monograph on the writings of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. She is also the Founder of the Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop, which takes place annually during the summer.