While this year’s graduates are very diverse in theme and approach, they reflect close engagement with ideas of embodiment, writes Niamh NicGhabhann
Discussions around creativity this year have been overshadowed by the idea of artificial intelligence (AI). Do we need writers and journalists when ChatGPT can be used to quickly put together a summary, even in the required ‘tone of voice’ or style of a named author? What is the significance of the original intention of an artist when an AI tool can ‘complete’ a painting by ‘going beyond the frame’? These issues are serious enough to bring sections of the creative industries to a halt. In May, members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike in order to access better pay, conditions and contracts, as well as new provisions regarding AI and the future of their work. At first glance, it may seem like an ever-more-precarious time for those working in creative professions, who spend their time developing their craft, skill and ideas. While predicting the future is usually a mug’s game, and these developments are more than likely to cause at least some disruption, they may also make the need for individual critical and creative engagement more acutely felt across society. If we are entering an era where a ‘perfect’ image or text can be immediately produced to order, forms of messy, discordant, uncomfortable, incomplete and troublesome knowledge may become increasingly important – knowledge that engages with embodiment, with its frailties and humour, its unreasonable weeping and its uncontrollable laughing; forms of knowing that exist beyond and outside the obvious or the algorithmic. Indeed, artists are already using the results of AI-generated content as found objects or ready-mades in their own critical inquiries.
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