Happy to share details about my most recent book: The Rise of Metacreativity: AI Aesthetics After Remix (Routledge). It was released in late 2022 with an official date of 2023. It’s available on all major online bookstores. The book was reviewed by Francesco D’Isa for Los Angeles Review of Books: “Can Algorithms Make Art?“

Book Description:

This book brings together history and theory in art and media to examine the effects of artificial intelligence and machine learning in culture, and reflects on the implications of delegating parts of the creative process to AI.

In order to understand the complexity of authorship and originality in relation to creativity in contemporary times, Navas combines historical and theoretical premises from different areas of research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to provide a rich historical and theoretical context that critically reflects on and questions the implications of artificial intelligence and machine learning as an integral part of creative production. As part of this, the book considers how much of postproduction and remix aesthetics in art and media preceded the current rise of metacreativity in relation to artificial intelligence and machine learning, and explores contemporary questions on aesthetics. The book also provides a thorough evaluation of the creative application of systematic approaches to art and media production, and how this in effect percolates across disciplines including art, design, communication, as well as other fields in the humanities and social sciences.

An essential read for students and scholars interested in understanding the increasing role of AI and machine learning in contemporary art and media, and their wider role in creative production across culture and society.

The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities was published in March, 2021. In order to highlight our third anthology on remix studies and support interdisciplinary research on remix as a form of creative production and communication, xtine burrough, Owen Gallagher, and I decided to organize a series of dialogues via Zoom. The first dialogue took place on May 5, 2021. It featured scholars, artists, and designers: Anne Burdick, David J. Gunkel, Virginia Kuhn, and Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky. A video recording of the event is archived and available for viewing.

Our second dialogue is taking place on September 23 and will feature scholars, artists, and designers: Aram Sinnreich, Maggie Clifford, Fernanda Rosa, Scott Church, and Michael Collins who are brought together to continue our ongoing discussions on remix as a creative variable at play across culture. Registration for this free event is free via Zoom.

Information about The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and our previous two publications can be found at remixstudies.com

We are planning three more remix studies events for Fall 2021 and Spring of 2022.

YouTube Description: Esther Wojcicki chairperson of the board of Creative Commons interviewed at the Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford University, Palo Alto in June 2010. Esther talks about the way the creative commons licence works and assesses the potential for the movement. The interview itself is of course offered under an informal creative commons licence whereby anyone is free to re-publish the video so long as Winchester Journalism is credited as the source and so long as any editing does not change the general character of the interview.

On April 27, I viewed Mind Over Money on Nova.  The documentary portrays different theories by economists about emotional and rational decisions.  I found the documentary of interest in part because throughout the program  an experiment with a twenty dollar bill, which sold for twenty-eight dollars during an auction, was used as an example of how emotion and peer pressure may play a role in economic decisions.  This experiment reminded me of an art performance I organized during a 1998 residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where I auctioned two hundred dollars for two hundred and five dollars.

Part of the argument:

A new study at Harvard is exploring how emotions affect our decisions, whether we like it or not.

Image and text source: Design Observer

Note: Interesting discussion published at Design Observer.  There is also a Part Two:
http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10197

I’m also enjoying the new DO design.  They’re starting to look more like a design portal, proper.

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Long before the global economy seized up, Kurt Andersen and Douglas Rushkoff were contemplating the links between society and capital—which makes their views on the recent recession timely, if notably different from one another’s. In June, Rushkoff, the media critic and documentary filmmaker, published Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back. In this book, he interprets the recession as the outcome of a centuries-old amoxil amoxicillin ethos prizing speculation over value and profit over human connection. Andersen, essayist, novelist, and host of public radio’s Studio 360 arts program, for his part, has just come out with Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. As the title suggests, it’s a study in optimism.

Change Observer’s Julie Lasky invited both men to discuss how we landed in this stew and what the future portends. The conversation took place via email July 6–10, 2009.

Read the entire discussion at Design Observer.