Spectral Imprints: Sentient Pluralities and Unhuman Art

Advances in artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and generative software provoke complex questions about the nature of creative practice and human expression. It is crucial that artists interrogate these technologies, activating the studio as a site of knowledge production and creative response.

This exhibition features artworks created by students, faculty, and staff from Akademii Sztuk Pięknych im. Eugeniusza Geperta working with Fulbright Scholar Paul Catanese during spring 2024 to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence(s), and creative practice through a seminar incorporating theoretical readings and hands-on practice. This exhibition includes artworks responding to these new technologies including digital prints, silkscreen, lightboxes, video, and animations.

The reality of artificial intelligence(s) today marks a paradigmatic shift in human cultural production; artists must negotiate this evolving landscape and actively respond in order to participate in shaping the hybrid future in which we live.

Curator: Paul Catanese

Participants: Iga Budzik, Ana Carp, Paul Catanese, Jagoda Golińska, Kamila Jaśkiewicz, Agata Korny, Giulia Mazzarella, Maria Mikołajewska, Izabella Nogalska, Zuzanna Pelc, Wiktoria Richel, Liv Rodgers, Kseniia Romanova, Zofia Ryżewska, Gabriel Silva, Astitva Singh, Aleksandra Trojanowska, Maja Wolińska, Aleksandra Zawadka.

Paul Catanese is a hybrid media artist who blurs the lines between the fine, performing, and media arts through a wide array of artworks including installations, performances, videos, experimental opera, projections, net.art, virtual reality, electronic artists books, and print media.  His artwork has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Chicago Cultural Center, New Museum of Contemporary Art, SFMOMA Artist's Gallery, La Villette, China Academy of Art, Frankston Art Center, Stuttgart Filmwinter, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and ISEA among others. Catanese is the author of Director's Third Dimension (2001),  and co-author of Post-Digital Printmaking: CNC, Traditional, and Hybrid Techniques (2012). From 2009 to 2014, he served as President of the New Media Caucus, an international professional society. In 2014, he was awarded an Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, named the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Colgate University in 2018/19 and named a Fulbright Scholar to Poland for 2024. Catanese is a Professor of Art and Art History at Columbia College Chicago. Collections include the Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries at Wright State University, Center for Art + Environment Archives at the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.