COMPLEX - Critics Page

The recent proliferation of emergent technologies (GANs, blockchain, virtual worlds, text and image generators, AR, etc.) brought attention to an array of visual culture productions. Complex art projects appeared alongside financialized collectibles, expansive digital worlds alongside a corporate metaverse, generated images alongside conceptually dense work. Early practitioners gained new audiences and emergent artists exploded onto the scene. With such heterogeneity also came confusion. Exhibitions and criticism aimed to cultivate, distinguish, and explain the variety. I recently wrote that "A defensive attitude pervades discussions of digital art because it has been accused of being too formal, too political, too abstract, too narrative, too dull, too hyper, too immaterial, too consumptive, too fetishistic, too esoteric, too tied to military-industrial-platform-capitalism…the list goes on." Technology has its root in the Greek word tekne, a skilled making, and the word art stems from the Roman ars, meaning the same. Art and Technology, therefore, presents a phrase that doubles down on the learning and practice of creative pursuit, and yet often seems so broad as to be incoherent.

In response to all this heterogeneity and confusion, this Critics Page seeks to capture the diverse insights of widely regarded professionals in the field for the sake of positing a set of perspectives on art and technology and where it is going. For our symposium, please identify a word you would love to never have used again in conversations about art and technology, or one word you think should be used more often and dig into what about that word creates problems or opportunities.