Full title

Visual Representations of AI in popular culture: myths, imaginaries, and science communication

Time

We set up the room from 13.00, the seminar starts 13.15.

Abstract

For this seminar, I will present my work on the forthcoming book Visual Representations of AI in popular culture: myths, imaginaries, and science communication (Palgrave Macmillan).

At the time when discussions surrounding societal implications of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies largely focus on the effects on the job market, ethics, and impact of LLMs, this book will address a complementary, but far less researched topic: visualisations of AI across media, and its role in shaping imaginaries about AI technologies in general.

The monograph will explore the work of representation (Hall, 1997), iconology (Mitchell, 1986) and intervisuality (Mirzoeff, 1999) applied to AI in a selection of media (with a special focus on film and microstock images). It will offer an analysis of common visual representations, involving transparent ‘electronic’ brains, blue halos, and robots. The monograph will be rooted in Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies, and it will look at situated historical circumstances surrounding technological phenomena and their prominence (Wajcman, 2004).

The starting point for this project is an understanding that all technologies are inherently political (Winner, 1980; Agre, 1997) and visual representations shape imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015) thus contributing to stabilisation of particular visual discourses, and in some instances, to a rise of “epistemic colonialism” (Pasquinelli & Joler, 2020).

Welcome!

The seminar is hybrid. 

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Passcode: K3