Twenty-First International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

The research project Corps Hackeur focuses on our changing relationship with images under the conditions of automated interpretation of complex imagery and the emergence of synthetic image generation that produces realistic visuals detached from physical reality. It develops experimental methods to explore this evolving relationship, opening new spaces for play, doubt, and questioning. This approach seeks to move beyond the dominant techno-media narratives that chronicle the rapid development of AI-based image and video generation. The research employs video as a tool for thought. It is inherently interdisciplinary, emerging from the intersection of artistic methods like an experimental character with a philosophical concept of life that understands it as fundamentally spatial (as articulated by Helmuth Plessner in The Levels of Organic Life and the Human). The four resulting experiments introduce distinct speculative situations shaped by varying degrees of automation—both generative (dialogue, image, music) and interpretative (emotion detection, image analysis, suggestions for social media optimization, etc.). The project proposes to take into view the spaces of encounter of human and avatars, each endowed with emotional analysis capabilities and distinct forms of intelligence. Corps Hackeur represents an initial exploration of this hybrid ecology.