Visions: Software and Creativity in the Age of Digital Media
In the early 1990s, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote a short text called Postscript on the Societies of Control. In it, he focuses on the shift that society is about to undergo with the advent of computers and digital technologies, emphasizing the logic of networking and the constant modulation of the relationship between humans and technology. At the same time, the phrase “surfing the Internet” also emerged, around which the comics The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy spins, featuring a duel with Count Crackula, highlighting both the endless possibilities that digital technology brings, but also the threats that emerge in the new digital environment.
The last 10 to 15 years have been marked by the improvement and development of software and technological solutions that enable new ways of creativity in visual design, where artificial intelligence plays an absolutely crucial role. This is the articulation of a dream formulated as early as the 1960s by J. C. R. Licklider in his text Man-Computer Symbiosis, and hinted at by Douglas Engelbart in his legendary 1968 Mother of All Demons lecture, in which he introduced a system for transmitting live video conferences.
The intimate connection between humans and digital technology thus leads to the emergence of a new type of subject whose creative abilities are supplemented and amplified by artificial intelligence, digital media, and software.
The lecture will focus on the implications and examples of the connection between human and computer technology.
Martin Charvát works as an assistant professor at the Department of Media Studies of the Metropolitan University of Prague and his main research topics include techno imagination, media archaeology, new media and philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In his lecture, he will focus on the influence of software and technology on creative fields in the last decade.
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