Rather than enabling radical experimentation, these systems often resolve into a “canny valley” —
a zone of overfamiliar coherence. Though bias, synthetic “moods,” and aesthetics are not embedded in advance but emerge through
systemic operations, their emergence is frequently steered toward a telos of the familiar. Without reducing the issue to flawed
datasets or dismissing AI as a merely regurgitative “stochastic parrot,” the talk explores the potential of synthetic intelligence
and AI media generators as instruments of poietic praxis — requiring careful attunement to the novel patterns that arise through
their experimentation. It emphasises the importance of distinguishing between different forms of the unknown within these
systems, particularly the differences between randomness, undecidability, and noncomputability — each implying distinct artistic
strategies. The ideas presented are practice-led, discussed through the experimental architecture of Polymorphs — a collaborative
series of artworks and a complex generative AI system developed at the Artificial and Distributed Intelligence Lab, Royal
College of Art, London.
Sonia Bernac is an artist, writer, and technologist. Her research investigates
the ontological tensions of old and new materialisms, synthetic teratologies, intuitions of science-fiction, and pre-Enlightenment
systems of knowledge. Framed as a bestiary of distributed intelligence, her work makes sense of hallucinations in generative
AI, latent spaces, and emergent moods within synthetic environments. Without equating the non-human with the inhumane, she
pays particular attention to the emergence of pathological systemic formations – exclusionary, compulsive, or sadistic imaginaries.
Most recently, she was a senior researcher at Antikythera and the Artificial and Distributed Intelligence Lab at the Royal
College of Art.
Monika Halkort is assistant professor and head of the Art x Science School for
Transformation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research and teaching focus on the political ecology of transformation
processes, emphasising, in particular, the role of bio/geo-chemical substances and materials in mediating historical (in)justice
and change.
About the series
and information about all lecturesSchool
for TransformationAIL
Kommende Termine der Serie:
06.05.2025,
16:00 Uhr, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Correlation and the 'breeding' of better futures
13.05.2025, 12:00 Uhr, Daniela
Zyman: Counter-research and the Arts: A Thousand Other Ways of Knowing
27.05.2025, 18:00 Uhr, Svitlana Matviyenko
with Ramon Reichert: Synthetic Images | Dynamic Maps
10.06.2025, 18:00 Uhr, Noit Banai with Amanda Holmes: The
Paradoxes of Positionality: Diaspora Aesthetics and Transdisciplinary Research
17.06.2025, 18:00 Uhr, Heather Davis
with Monika Halkort: Plasctic Aesthetics
24.06.2025, 18:00 Uhr, Miya Yoshida: Transvaluation: Reclaiming Time
