MDA10001

Introduction
to
Media Studies
Guest lecture: Truth
in the age of AI-
generated Art and
Media
Dr Andy Lynch
alynch@swin.edu.au
 1. What is generative AI?
Today’s lecture:
expanding on 2. How can we understand it using
some ideas from media studies?
MDA10001 in
3. What does AI mean for the future
relation to AI of media, art and “truth”?
1. What is generative AI?
In August 2022 Jason M. Allen, known online
as ‘Sincarnate’, won the emerging digital
artist competition at the Colorado State Fair
for the work “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” an
elaborate sci-fi-inspired image with hints of
the Baroque which he printed on canvas.
Allen produced the image using Midjourney,
with which he had been experimenting for
weeks, a relatively short time compared to
the years needed to master figurative oil
painting. Other contestants accused Allen of
cheating, but he claimed that his ‘creative’
methods were clear from the beginning.
Interviewed by The New York Times, Allen said: “I couldn’t believe what I was
seeing. I felt like it was demonically inspired — like some otherworldly force
was involved.” (Roose, 2022).

In response, author David Brooks wrote a column in The New York Times
saying that AI is better understood through revealing what it can’t do. Of AI
art such as Allen’s “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial”, he said: ‘It’s often bland and
vague. It’s missing a humanistic core. It’s missing an individual person’s
passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does
not spring from a person’s imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that
underlie any profound work of human creativity’ (Allen, 2023).
A sort of magic
Peoples’ pleasure in AI image generators
resided in the AI’s results and the magical
human-machine dialogue. ‘What I love
about prompting for me… it has
something like magic where you have to
know the right words for that, for the
spell’ (Vox, 2022). Others saw it as a
magical tool: ‘It feels like you’ve created a
magic pencil here that can literally make
any work of art that you want with just a
few words’ (NBC Today Show, 2022)
MARK COECKELBERGH.
2015. “CAN MACHINES
CREATE
ART?” PHILOSOPHY
AND TECHNOLOGY,
30, PAGES 285–303.
“…IF A WORK OF ART AND INDEED AN ARTISTIC PROCESS IS HYBRID
HUMAN/NON-HUMAN, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR ITS ARTISTIC
STATUS? IS SUCH A WORK LESS ARTISTIC BECAUSE IT IS LESS ‘PURE’
(PURELY HUMAN), AND IF SO, WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM? IS IT LESS
ARTISTIC BECAUSE A MACHINE IS USED?” (COECKELBERG, 2015)
“ THE ARTISTIC PROCESS IS ALWAYS TECHNOLOGICAL IN THE SENSE
THAT IT ALWAYS INVOLVES THE USE OF TECHNOLOGIES/MEDIA”
(COECKELBERG, 2015)
2. How can we understand
generative AI using media
studies?
 With the coming of photography and
other technologies, works of art became
reproducible
Probably the most significant shift to
occur in art/media history:
Changed the nature of art and image;
And had BIG implications for ideas of
realism and authenticity…

Walter Benjamin
The Work of Art
in the Age of
Mechanical
Reproduction
(1936)
Notably, being able to reproduce
art/media in this way meant being
able to shift it out of its original
context.
“Technical reproduction can put the
copy of the original into situations
which would be out of reach for the
original itself …"
“Even the most perfect
reproduction of a work of art is
lacking in one element: its
presence in time and space, its
unique existence at the place
where it happens to be.”
“One might subsume the eliminated element in
the term ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which
withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is
the aura of the work of art.”
Why is it not impressive to see this
recreated image of the Mona Lisa?

“The presence of the original is the

prerequisite to the concept of
authenticity.”

With reproducibility, the concept of

the original changed – and the
authenticity of art became crucially
important. Something is/was
believed to be lost in the process of
reproduction.
“The technique of reproduction
detaches the reproduced object
from the domain of tradition.
By making many reproductions
it substitutes a plurality of
copies for a unique existence.”
New contexts and multiple
contexts all at once…
https://medium.com/@DaveHallmon/exploring-stylizing-the-mona-lisa-using-midjourney-
advanced-text-prompt-options-70d96cecc574
EMANUELE ARIELLI AND LEV
MANOVICH, "AI-AESTHETICS AND THE
ANTHROPOCENTRIC MYTH OF
CREATIVITY," NODES JOURNAL OF ART
AND
NEUROSCIENCE (NODESJOURNAL.CO
M), FALL 2022.
“ TO WHOM SHOULD WE ATTRIBUTE AUTHORSHIP IF AN ARTIFACT OR
IMAGE IS THE PRODUCT OF DEVICES, ALGORITHMS, AND
TECHNOLOGICAL EXTENSIONS THAT GENERATE AND REINTERPRET AN
ARTIST ’S OR DESIGNER’S INTENTION?”
( ARIELLI , MANOVICH 2022)
What is art?
Defining autolography
(Chesher & Albarran-
Torres, 2023)
The practice of using
AI text-to-image
generators— from the
Greek automatos +
logos + graphos (self +
word + drawing)
What is style?

• Who owns style?

• What is a copy, what is an
original?
• Ai-generated or AI-assisted art?
What is the difference?
• “In the style of” trope among
Midjourney prompters.
Photography/autolography

Photography Autolography
Source of images Visual world Visual archives

Technologies Optics, chemistry Microelectronics, software

Indexicality Trace Simulation

Uncanniness Mortality Never lived

Psychological origins Optical unconscious Photographic unconscious

Cultural temporality Modern Postmodern

 THE POWER OF FILM TO REPRESENT
REALITY…

ANDRÉ BAZIN (1918-

1958)
‣ French film critic, co-founder of hugely
influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma.

‣ Like the Frankfurt School, Bazin was

troubled by media’s role in the rise of
fascism, but celebrated the power of film
to represent reality.
 ANDRÉ BAZIN

‣ “The Ontology of the Photographic Image’

‣ Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of

being, existence, or reality. Bazin was interested in
the ontology of photographic images (i.e. their
relationship to reality).

‣ “[A]t the origin of painting and sculpture there lies a

mummy complex... the preservation of life by a
representation of life.”

‣ ‘Preserving life’ points to realism as a way of

capturing life with greater fidelity, accuracy, quality.
 ANDRÉ BAZIN

‣ Photography was thought to offer a strong

ontological bond between image and
referent.

‣ Bazin: “The objective nature of

photography confers on it a quality of
credibility absent from all other picture-
making.”

‣ “The aesthetic qualities of photography are

to be sought in its power to lay bare the
realities.”
Which of these book covers
was created by AI?
(Why) Does it matter?
3. What does AI mean for the
future of media, art and
“truth”?
 Marshall McLuhan
• For McLuhan, media form is most important.

• It’s not just what’s in the text that impacts its

meaning – but the form it takes to do that
communication also changes its meanings.

• But was less interested in semiotics/content

e.g. what is on the television is less important
than the television itself and its impacts on
society.
IDEAS

MEDIUM Now we can freely

access the ideas of
others
PRINTING PRESS
Now we can listen to
the ideas of others
whilst doing other
things
RADIO

Now we can visually see

the ideas of others in
the comfort of our
homes
TELEVISION

Now we can interact

and respond to the
INTERNET ideas of others from all
over the world

Generative AI ????
 • Copyright issues
• Labour issues: are machines taking jobs
away from humans?
• Fake news, distortion of reality?
Relationship to deepfakes.
Real world
• Misrepresentation/representation/stereo
implications of types: most programs seem to default to
generative AI as a stereotypes privileging white,
media form patriarchal, able-bodied, cis-gender, and
heterosexual interpretations of the
world. For example, if the user invoked a
nurse, the person represented would be
female, while an invocation of a CEO
would produce a man, most probably
white.
Ai and cultural panics (maybe
justified?)
Even expert high-profile technologists have
used hyperbolic metaphors about the
spiritual implications of AI. For example, Mo
Gawdat, previously head of Google X, is
quoted as saying about AI, ‘We’re going to
build amazing things that are going to
change even more people’s lives… The reality
is… we’re creating God’ (Rifkind, 2021). Elon
Musk is quoted as saying about artificial
intelligence that ‘We’re summoning the
demon’ (Marche, 2022).
Which of these images were
generated by AI?
Trick!
None of them were!

Is this our future of ontological

uncertainty?
‘In 1996, Stephen Prince used the term to describe the challenge digital effects technology
posed to the indexical sense of realism film had traditionally possessed. This problematised
‘photographically based notions of cinematic realism’, including André Bazin’s oft-cited
‘realist aesthetic’ which relied on the assumption of a photographic referent essential to
cinema (Prince 1996, 28). In Prince’s understanding, digital effects render the truthfulness
of the film image in doubt (1996, 32). He concludes that the ‘perceptually realistic image is
one which structurally corresponds to the viewer’s audio-visual experiences of three-
dimensional space’ (1996, 32). ‘ (Lynch 2022)

“The tools of digital filmmaking are transforming all aspects of cinema, including
production, postproduction, and exhibition. In the process, they are altering the visual
characteristics of the moving image and changing the viewer’s perceptual understanding of
the nature of cinema” (Stephen Prince 2004)
In Hamlet on the Holodeck (1998), Janet Murray uses the
holodeck as a paradigm of an ideal media form.
In Star Trek, the holodeck is a virtual reality room that
can transport people into fully experiential spaces. (It is
a utopian technology used for traditional narrative ends
– it is used in series to sketch deeper characters,
facilitate new storylines and change scenery from the
starship.)

“It sums up the hopes aroused by the increasingly visceral

representational technologies of the twentieth century. Eventually
all successful storytelling technologies become ‘transparent’: we
lose consciousness of the medium and see neither print nor film but
only the power of the story itself.”
“As the virtual world takes on increasing expressiveness, we will slowly
get used to living in a fantasy environment that now strikes us as
frighteningly real. But at some point we will find ourselves looking
through the medium instead of at it. Then we will no longer be interested
in whether the characters we are interacting with are scripted actors, nor
will we continue to think about whether the place we are occupying
exists as a photograph of a theatrical set or as a computer-generated
graphic, or about whether it is delivered to us by radio waves or
telephone wires. At that point, when the medium itself melts away into
transparency, we will be lost in the make-believe and care only about the
story. We will not notice when it happens, but at that moment we will
find ourselves at home on the holodeck.”
- Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck (1998)
MDA10001
Introduction
to
Media Studies
Guest lecture: Truth
in the age of AI-
generated Art and
Media
Dr Andy Lynch
alynch@swin.edu.au