As the creative capabilities of nonhuman machines, materials and phenomena, as well as human collectives and businesses, become increasingly acknowledged, the frontiers of art as a human-centric activity are blurred and the figure of the artist as the ultimate source of artistic creation is shaken. This is happening in the context of the emergence of creative industries and the automation of creative labor through artificial intelligence, both of which threaten the role and status of the artist. At the same time, as societies are faced with dire global challenges which our current socio-economic and political systems seem unable to efficiently address, we are in urgent need for imagining and articulating alternative worldviews. Expanding Ada Lovelace’s thought about computing systems: can nonhuman machines and processes have any pretension to “originate anything”? Can art exist outside of its human framework, decoupled from the socio-techno-cultural context in which it is produced? How can we (re)imagine artistic creation in this new posthuman paradigm? In this round table, the participants approach these questions through the themes of metacreation, nonhuman creation in plants, ecosystems, environments, and excitable matter(ials), as well as human-nonhuman collaboration and co-creation.

Speakers
Sofian Audry (CA), Edwige Armand (FR), Gisèle Trudel (CA), Navid Navab (CA), Danny Perreault (CA)