I’ve just published an article, «The Wager of the Algorithm: Towards a Performatic Gesture» (please use a computer for correct formatting), which proposes what relation art might develop toward the contemporary question of the algorithm and artificial intelligence. (To read/view, please click this title-link above, then click Open Exposition). Just published in the SAR performance studies journal ARTEACTA (Czech Republic) – this issue #13 on AI (and) Art: The Poetics of Prompting – my paper endeavors to find a third path (artistic/political) beyond both the paranoid and the utopian ideas of artificial intelligence by bringing out internal structural contradictions in the very logic of artificial intelligence itself. Allusions to computation theory, art history, philosophy, and work I’ve done with AI and code give context for the central argument. Note some experimentation with the conventions and limits of academic prose.
ABSTRACT:
The fantasy of the algorithm and, by extension, artificial intelligence imagines that each performs by executing an operational task. Yet, based on its inherent computational structure, the digital performance fails to live up to its instrumental promise. This failure foregrounds an occasion for artistic intervention. “The Wager of the Algorithm: Towards a Performatic Gesture” presents a theoretical statement (illustrated via artwork by the author) in which the overall exposition underscores a dialectic within instrumental reason itself. The “prompt” names are a shorthand for the fulcrum of this problematic.