Ask not what AI can do for art... but what art can do for AI

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Meredith Tromble
San Francisco Art Institute

What can art do for artificial intelligence? This essay circles around this question from a viewpoint grounded in the embodied knowledge base of contemporary art. The author employs the term “feelthink” to refer to the shifting webs of perception, emotion, thought, and action probed by artists engaging AI. Tracing several metaphors used by artists to consider AI, the author identifies points where the metaphors delaminate, pulling away from the phenomena to which they refer. The author advocates for these partial and imagistic understandings of AI as probes which, despite or because of their flaws, contribute important ideas for the development and cultural positioning of AI entities. The author further questions the limited scope of art ideas addressed in AI research and proposes a thought experiment in which art joins industry as a source of questions for developing artificial intelligences. In conclusion, the essay’s structuring metaphor is described as an example of “feelthink” at work.

Keywords
Art, artificial intelligence, A.I., embodiment, feelthink, metaphor

Article Details

How to Cite
Tromble, Meredith. “Ask not what AI can do for art. but what art can do for AI”. Artnodes, no. 26, pp. 1-9, doi:10.7238/a.v0i26.3368.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(c) Meredith Tromble, 2020


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Author Biography

Meredith Tromble, San Francisco Art Institute

Meredith Tromble is an intermedia artist and writer. Her curiosity about the links between imagination and knowledge led her to collaborate with scientists in addition to making installations, drawings, and performances. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including a survey of her artwork from the past decade in the exhibition “Umwelt” at BioBAT Art Space in Brooklyn. She holds joint appointments as artist-in-residence at the Complexity Sciences Center and Visiting Scholar at the Feminist Research Institute at the University of California, Davis. She is the editor of two books, The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture, co-edited with Charissa Terranova, and The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman, University of California Press. She is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies/Art & Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute.

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