Almost one century after Walter Benjamin’s dissertation on the value of the work of art under the impact of its technological reproduction on the roots of globalization and mass media society, the current research aims to provide some coordinates to approach the influence of AI co-creative processes in the artistic field.This paper is about looking back and forward: looking back at the roots of the formulation of the cult value of the work of art with the advent of the new technologies – a tribute to Walter Benjamin and those who, as Rosalind Krauss among many others, carried out a mission to update his legacy over the years; looking forward to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age, where human-machine co-creativity opens a new horizon to redefine the role of the artist herself.Fernández-Castrillo, Carolina. (2023). The AI Work of Art in the Age of its Co-Creation. magazén. 10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2023/02/008.
11 McCormack et al. argue that In essence, all generative art focuses on the process by which an artwork is made, and this process is required to have a degree of autonomy and independence from the artist who defines it. The degree of autonomy and independence assigned to the computer varies significantly from works that seek to minimize or exclude the creative signature of the human designer to those in which the computers role is more passive and the human artist has primary creative responsibility and autonomy (2014, 135). 368 magazn 4, 2, 2023, 357-384 e-ISSN 2724-3923 Figure 4 Joseph Racknitz, Kempelens The Turk. 1789. Humboldt University Library. Wikimedia Commons.
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On the other hand, the deepfakes and the wide range of manipulative practices, daily reported on the breaking news, tend to generate suspicion and rejection against AI in the public opinion. Across creative industries, an increasing number of professionals do not hide their reluctance towards an uncertain future where human creativity seems to be continuously challenged. Reluctance has always been a common reaction to the first contact with new media and technologies, but in this case, it turns into rivalry. Instead of trying to fuel the competition, we will follow the itinerary initiated since the late 1960s by those academics, artists and engineers who tried to promote cooperative strategies to enhance this union. From the program Generative Systems at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sheridan12 denounced that:
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12 Sheridan also stated that We must clarify why we are not dealing with copier art but with art made by tools which are leading us to the edge of new breakthroughs in art and democratization. What we are witnessing is an information explosion which is a continuation of the printing and photographic revolutions (1983, 103). 369 magazn 4, 2, 2023, 357-384 e-ISSN 2724-3923
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As long as artists align themselves with anti-machine movements they deny themselves the creative forces to communicate with their fellow humans in new and dynamic ways [] Art will continue to remain on the entertainment pages, peripheral to society, unless artists take be their rightful place along with scientists in molding our new information architecture and language context [] We must clarify why we are not dealing with copier art but with art made by tools which are leading us to the edge of new breakthroughs in art and democratization. What we are witnessing is an information explosion which is a continuation of the printing and photographic revolutions. (1983, 103, 108)
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