New Indiana University art exhibition "blurs the lines" between AI and man-made art

Source: The Herald-Times

The past few years have had no shortage of negative publicity about artificial intelligence (AI) in art. Disputes about copyright and intellectual property and the potential loss of creative jobs in gaming and film due to AI have become major new controversies and even prompted more existential questions about the future of art in the modern age.

A new exhibition at the Grunwald Gallery in Indiana University’s Eskenazi School for Art, Architecture and Design, titled “Blurring the Lines,” showcases art pieces across multiple media that are either made by or assisted by AI technologies. From an oil painting “self-portrait” by an AI robot to receipt-printed “poetry” generated by a camera-equipped smart car, the Grunwald Gallery exhibition shows how AI can be used to assist, not supplement, works of art.

The galleries co-curators, associate professor Caleb Weintraub and Grunwald Gallery director Linda Tien, say they hope AI critics and advocates alike will leave with “more questions than answers” about AI’s role in the future of art.

“With this whole exhibition, we’re not necessarily trying to prescribe any one perspective,” Tien said. 

Exhibition offers ‘a glimpse into how artists are working with AI’

The exhibition, free and open to the public now through Nov. 16, showcases AI’s capacities in studio art, music, written word, performance art and more from creatives engaging with the topic of AI art around the globe.

“Self Portrait” by humanoid robot artist Ai-Da shows both the capacity for AI to work in physical media like oil paintings while highlighting the impossibility of a selfless being creating a “self-portrait.”

UK-based artist Kexin Liu’s “3607-Bacterial Soundscape” creates a four-track record of eerie electronic music made by sequencing data from bacterial microbiomes into corresponding music notes (with a fuchsia-splashed vinyl made from pigment-producing bacterium).

New England artist and “gonzo data scientist” Ross Goodwin’s “1 the Road” and “word.camera” show AI’s capacity (and limitations) for making prose and poetry by converting dashcam video taken on a cross-country road trip into text that was printed live on receipt paper (an undertaking inspired by Jack Kerouac’s classic novel, “On the Road”).

Each piece, Weintraub notes, is not wholly created by AI, and often utilizes AI technologies within specific parameters or data libraries set by the artist themselves — thus eschewing concerns about stealing intellectual property that typically plague discussions of AI art.

“We often think about AI art as something that’s a shortcut or a replacement, so I think having work that’s exploring other means of using the technology in a way that’s more considered is what the show is intended to do,” Weintraub said. “This is a glimpse into how artists are working with AI in ways that are really compelling or thought provoking; sometimes deeply troubling, but sometimes also really reassuring.”

Eskenazi school alumnus Sougwen Chung’s paintings, which were collaboratively traced and painted between them and an AI robot they created named D.O.U.G. (Drawing Operations Unit Generation_X) highlights how Weintraub hopes AI can aid human art, rather than replace it.

“There’s still so many hours of human labor behind these works,” Tien said.

Curators hope to highlight AI art’s risks, potential

As educators in the Eskenazi School actively teaching the next generation of artists, Tien and Weintraub are well aware of the risks AI’s unprecedented expansion poses to creatives.

Both 2023 and 2024 saw the movie and video game industries strike en masse against studios to demand worker protections against AI, and class action lawsuits have been filed in federal court over AI image generators scrapping creators’ art without consent.

Tien and Weintraub say it’s precisely because of those near-future risks that they hope students in the Eskenazi School will engage with both the “Blurring the Lines” exhibition and better educate themselves about the challenges — and potential benefits — AI poses to the future of the art world.

“Whatever opinion you have about AI, my hope is that you come out of this interested to at least learn about it, so you can go out into the world and talk about it in an informed way and advocate for better protections,” Tien said. “Let’s advocate for labor protections in the creative field. Let’s be informed advocates for ourselves and other artists.”

Weintraub notes that new technologies have a long history of being received with skepticism in the art world, from photography to the outgrowth of digital production in music.

Weintraub believes that as AI becomes more commonplace in art, the technology may allow artists to produce larger outputs — for example, hundreds of man and robot-made images like Chung’s paintings — and lean on more curatorial skills to create the final, human product.

“With music production, with using loops, no one’s saying, ‘Oh that’s not art.’ That has clear authorship,” Weintraub said. “There’s an organizing vision, and in some ways, that might be the crux of where the art is.”

While Weintraub and Tien don’t consider themselves advocates for AI art, they hope the exhibition can spark larger conversations about how the technology will shape the art world’s future.

“If we don’t acknowledge it, we’re keeping our heads in the dark,” Weintraub said. “We will be dictating what the next scene of the game is.”