Arts, Agency and Automation: A Global Cultural Affair

FAIN: DOI-299572-24

Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ 07043-1600)
Charlotte Lucy Kent (Project Director: October 2023 to present)

Multidisciplinary research and field interviews with internationally recognized artists resulting in academic articles and preparation of a book manuscript on the concept of agency as it relates to generative AI artistic production. 

The rise of automated art through the use of large model generators (LMGs) like Chat GPT or Dall-E contributes to anxiety about Artificial Intelligence "taking over." Arts, Agency and Automation: A Global Cultural Affair examines notions of agency across law, sociology, philosophy, psychology, posthumanism, as well as art theory, and conducts interviews with global artists using LMGs about the machine's agency and their own. Since people in nations like the US that are identified as individualist cultures conceive agency differently from collectivist communities, artists will represent different backgrounds and nationalities. LMGs are transnational, so their outputs are relevant to art, but also governments and regulatory authorities. Arts, Agency and Automation: A Global Cultural Affair proposes articles and a book to support journalists, artists, scholars, business leaders and politicians distinguishing among approaches to agency as produced by creative adoption of AI machines.