[1] Artificial Intelligence: Art Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

We welcome proposals to present at our session "Artificial Intelligence: Art Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" at the University Art Association Conference (UAAC), Oct. 19-21, 2023, being held at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. https://uaac-aauc.com/2023/7.html

As Artificial Intelligence develops exponentially with each passing month, machines are increasingly in the business of generating images and novels. Such developments, some argue, could fundamentally challenge humanity’s relationship to the creative process. And yet, we’ve heard this claim before: Aristotle decried the invention of writing for making human memory obsolete; Walter Benjamin argued that photography precipitated the destruction of the work of art’s aura; the readymade upended modern notions of originality and aesthetic value. This panel seeks to launch a conversation about the anxieties and realities surrounding past and present “intelligent” machines. In particular, we seek proposals by historians that, for example, consider the ways in which pre-modern, early-modern, or modern artists engaged automata or various “mnemotechniques” (Stiegler); ponder the uses of artificial neural networks for contemporary art practice; or reckon with the extraction of (human) labour that underpins machine-learning algorithms and data sets.

Co-chairs:
T'ai Smith, University of British Columbia, tai.smithubc.ca
Amber Frid-Jimenez, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, amberfjgmail.com

To submit a proposal, please complete the Call for Papers form at 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WJebVCv3lMZDpsRhk3LvAo8mCpgEycd70ygVYVK69mo/edit
and submit it to the session chairs at tai.smithubc.ca and amberfjgmail.com . Submissions are due by May 31, 2023.
Conference regulations and the full list of sessions can be found at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PAiylixEowOOPyX-ShLO53VOPKODh2Av/edit?rtpof=true&sd=true.

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[2] Speculative Methods and Alternative Archives in Art Historical Practice

Session Chairs: Nikki Georgopulos (University of British Columbia) and
Paula Burleigh (Allegheny College)

2023 Conference of the Universities Art Association of Canada/Congrès de l’Association d’art des universités du Canada at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity

As the discipline and practice of art history continues to be upended and amended, this panel investigates the ways in which research methods beyond the normative scholarly apparatus and evidentiary hierarchies can be brought to bear in our field. Taking cues from the work of Saidiya Hartman, we invite presentations on the application of critical fabulation, counter-archives, and other forms of speculative play to art historical materials. Moreover, we invite contributions that make explicit the necessarily personal (and, by extension, political) nature of scholarship; how might our understanding of art history and its methodologies change when we remove the imaginary boundary between our subjects and our subjectivities? Following a lively panel that engaged such themes within the realm of contemporary art and art historical practice at CAA 2023, we are specifically looking for papers that apply such methods to global, non-contemporary topics from any historical period.

To submit a proposal, please send a Call for Papers Proposal form (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WJebVCv3lMZDpsRhk3LvAo8mCpgEycd70ygVYVK69mo/edit) to the session chairs, Nikki Georgopulos (nikki.georgopulosubc.ca) and
Paula Burleigh (pburleighallegheny.edu), by May 31.

Further information can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PAiylixEowOOPyX-ShLO53VOPKODh2Av/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106923949276480241966&rtpof=true&sd=true