Abstract
In her 2025 exhibition at the List Gallery at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lakȟóta artist Kite explores the ability of machine learning and AI to articulate and respond to Lakȟóta ancestral knowledge. This paper is a close consideration of Kite’s project as a starting point for a broader examination of the ways in which contemporary Indigenous artists of the United States have engaged new technologies in their work. What is the potential of machine learning, AI, robotics, and other new technologies to articulate and accentuate Indigenous world views? In what creative and knowledge producing directions have these new technologies taken Indigenous art? What do these explorations reveal about the potential and the limitations of new technologies overall? These and other questions related to the use of new technologies by Indigenous artists will be explored. Overall, the paper hopes to provide an exploration of the positive potential of new technologies as they have been used by Indigenous artists as a guide for their ethical use at a time in which their malevolent potential has been clearly articulated more broadly.
Presenters
Cynthia FowlerProfessor of Art History, Art, Emmanuel College, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
New Media, Technology and the Arts
KEYWORDS
New Technologies, Indigenous Art of the United States
