Prolegomena to a Post-Aesthetics of Artificial Imaginations

TL;DR

This paper explores the emergence of artificial imagination through generative AI, proposing a post-aesthetic framework inspired by Hegel's aesthetics to phenomenally analyze AI-generated images.

Contribution

It introduces a post-aesthetic perspective on AI images, moving beyond instrumental or techno-theological views to phenomenally grasp their specificity.

Findings

AI images exhibit unique phenomenological qualities.

A post-aesthetic framework offers new insights into artificial imagination.

The approach bridges aesthetics and AI phenomenology.

Abstract

The acceleration of the use of generative artificial intelligences (AI), since 2015 and the turning point operated by Deepdream, tends to obscure a real analysis of what could be defined as artificial imagination. AIs are either reduced to simple instruments or thought of according to a form of techno-theologism. Our research tends to suspend any form of judgment in order to phenomenally grasp the emergence of these AIs. By taking up the question of Hegel's aesthetics and of art as the free production of the mind, but by moving it towards the question of generative AIs and therefore of a post-aesthetics, this article will show the phenomenal specificity of images generatedby AI.