Continuing to explore the topic of human relationships to machines I came across so MIT research that is creating plant-machine interfaces; Cyborg Botany.

The comment in the second video of the agency belonging entirely to the plant struck me. It seemed to link back to the discussion of the A.I artist, I tried to consider if the A.I artist had the power to direct the decisions in that scenario or if they were following the algorithm.

I tried to create a simple flow diagram to consider where the ‘agency’ might come into the creation process.

The seemingly obvious place for the agency to occur would be during the processing of the digital signal by the algorithm, but this would only be the case if this was not deterministic. It the same input always led to the same output then it would seem that no decision making was happening. This would be no different that running a filter on an image.

I tried to think about my own creative process, why do I think that I have agency in my creative decisions, I have tried to illustrate this in the diagram above, it feels like it is something to do with taking inspiration and then doing assessment, comparison, and clarification with this, it is not a direct processing but rather intensional decisions are being made. I thought about this in the context of human artists working with randomness, algorithms, or abstraction, it seems that there is still a processes of informed choice to work in this way, to direct the development of a process when it seems to be expressing something.

Aidan Meller is a specialist in modern and contemporary art who runs a gallery from Oxford and London.  He said: “Pioneering a new AI art movement, we are excited to present Ai-Da, the first professional humanoid artist, who creates her own art, as well as being a performance artist. As an AI robot, her artwork uses AI processes and algorithms. The work engages us to think about AI and technological uses and abuses in the world today.”

https://www.artsandcollections.com/humanoid-robot-artist-ai-da-can-draw-from-life/

Intension and processing, maybe it is A.I art.