Published: November 1, 2021
“The (de) situated subjective: a cognitive autoethnography of ‘the New York School’” is
published in the Technoetic Arts. You can access the paper here.
Abstract
This article presents a phenomenology of artistic painting as an anticipatory process. I propose
that the artist seeks to establish a state of equilibrium in a model of self-awareness expressed and
represented in a self-constituted physical artefact intended to communicate to others, not
representationally but affectively. ‘Neural painting’ is an arts-based research method employing
a simple computational model of human aesthetic discrimination to study the creative realization
of the artistic image. I use this method to explore the relationship of self and ‘other’ in
computationally mediated self-portraiture. I develop an image in an exchange with a neural
network by reflecting on its output and inputting autographic modifications to those images,
blending visceral gesture with the ‘black box’ of artificial intelligence. Through this deeply
personalized and perhaps agonistic interchange between organic self and algorithmic reflection, I
seek to expose the tacit mediation implicit in the technical artefact, opening an understanding of
the existential relations between natural systems (the artist) and technical entities positioned as
collaborators in an anticipatory aesthetics.
Keywords
creative systems, anticipatory aesthetics, creative process, machine metaphor, practice as
research, self-portraiture
Suk Kyoung Choi 