Het kunstwerk in het tijdperk van zijn kunstmatige genereerbaarheid

Abstract

Can AI create art, or does it merely simulate it? Photographer Lander Loeckx takes this urgent question, together with the viewing experiences he and his students had with the installation P for Power by artist Ho Tzu Nyen, as the starting point for his contribution. Loeckx argues that Walter Benjamin’s classic 1935 essay on the philosophy of culture, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, surprisingly offers a key to understanding the issue. Benjamin’s concept of the “aura” of the classical “one-off” work of art sheds light on what is radically new about artificially generated art. Following Benjamin, Loeckx believes that the shock and confusion AI artworks provoke in the viewer are productive.