‘Make it New’: GenAI, Modernism, and Database Art
Publication
Lev Manovich. "‘Make it New’: GenAI, Modernism, and Database Art." Trans-Spatial: Everything Tends to Be the Here and Now. Nam June Paik Art Center, 2024.
The earlier version of parts of this text appeared in Chapter 5, Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art, and Visual Media.
Abstract
This essay discusses similarities between media and art creation using Generative AI today and a number of conceptually related artistic paradigms in the 20th century. Although generative AI and modernist art appear to be opposites of each other (one was focused on "making it new," the other is based on training data of already existing art), I suggest that they closely related. While modernist artists explicitly opposed traditions, in reality they developed their new art languages by reinterpreting and incorporating older art forms from other cultures. Similarly, generative AI tools allow the creation of new works because they are trained on massive databases of existing art and media. Therefore, making new art and media with GenAI fits into a long-standing tradition in modern art that involves creating new art from accumulations of existing artifacts. This tradition encompasses modernist collage and photomontage, post-modern bricolage, net art, and the pioneering media work of artists like Nam June Paik. Contemporary AI artists, such as Refik Anadol and Lev Pereulkov, exemplify the practice of using AI models trained on specific datasets to produce novel artworks that engage in a dialogue with historical art while introducing new aesthetic possibilities.