Die Anmeldung beginnt erst am 02.10.2026 um 08:00 Uhr. Sie endet am 12.10.2026 um 23:59 Uhr.

This course examines possibilities for critical aesthetic practice within a technological context increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence—particularly generative AI (GenAI)—and its influence on artistic production and investigation. It foregrounds a paradox similar to Hannah Arendt’s observation in “The Human Condition” (1958) that we are “fellow sufferers” of the conditions we seek to examine: when research tools and conceptual frameworks are intertwined with the automated systems we aim to understand, the very effort of critical practice is shaped by the GenAI systems we analyze and critique.
In our course, we want to identify possibilities for critical artistic practices with, through, and on GenAI. In the first part, we establish a theoretical framework of self-reflexive, situated criticality for research and artistic practice. Here we will highlight three operative principles of GenAI that complicate established traditions of critical practice: black-boxing, access, and relationality. In the second part, we present and discuss examples of artistic investigative practices that work with, through, and on GenAI to expose the technology’s extractivist dynamics. Here, “extraction” refers to the operating principle of tech- and platform-capitalist value creation—characterized particularly by massive energy and data consumption—with disruptive consequences for multispecies ecosystems and human social bonds. These extractivist practices, and their ecological and social ramifications, are often removed from or shielded within consumer lifeworlds, hidden beneath engaging interfaces and narratives of collaboration, co-creation, or positivist innovation. The course treats investigative artistic practice as aesthetic strategies to reveal and make perceptible principles that are, by design, opaque and often imperceptible.

- develop knowledge in technocriticism, critical data studies, and art & technology studies;
- understand the relationship between ICT, energy/carbon impact, dis-/persuasive information, and tech- or platform-capitalist production;
- develop skills for critical assessment of related theories and of artistic or design practices (case studies) concerning extractivist digital technologies and their ecological and social impacts.

Weitere Informationen zur Lehrevaluation: https://www.leuphana.de/lehre/qualitaetsmanagement/evaluation/lehrveranstaltungsevaluation.html