AI Aesthetics. AI-Generated Images between Artistics and Aisthetics

Abstract

This volume investigates the intersection of generative AI and media aesthetics from an interdisciplinary perspective. Combining in-depth theoretical reflection with a diverse selection of case studies, its authors explore the aesthetic forms of AI-generated medial objects as well as the cultural imaginaries that the latter draw upon. Bringing together a group of scholars from various geographic and disciplinary backgrounds, the chapters move within and across different conceptualizations of “AI aesthetics” that can be located in-between an “aesthetics-as-artistics” (that is primarily concerned with aesthetic judgments related to skill and connoisseurship) and an “aesthetics-as-aisthetics” (that identifies all kinds of embodied perception as its object). The book thus reflects on both the theoretical and the methodological implications of “AI aesthetics,” while also demonstrating that this is still very much an emerging research field and that no dominant conceptualization of “AI aesthetics” has yet emerged. Considering its decidedly international and interdisciplinary scope, AI Aesthetics: AI-Generated Images between Artistics and Aisthetics will appeal to scholars and students within media studies, cultural studies, literary studies, philosophy, art history, visual culture studies, digital humanities, and critical AI studies.