Critical Reflections
Enhancing International Cooperation, Research, and Education: Building Relationships Through Globally-distibuted Media Arts Collaboration
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Oliverio
Research and development of real-time media arts performance and collaboration systems has been underway at the University of Florida Digital Worlds Institute since 2001.These intercontinental collaborations pioneered and developed esthetic, procedural, technological, and logistic practices through working with artists, engineers, researchers, students, and media producers across multiple time zones, classrooms and cultures. Participants, ranging in age from 9 through 72, have instigated, developed, and enhanced international relationships. Given the current availability of robust and scalable real-time video systems in both fixed and mobile devices, the techniques and processes resulting from this original research can now be shared across the globe, democratizing access, collaboration, and inclusion in ways not possible previously.
Featured From ‘Fan Art’ to 'Deepfake Porn': How Online Enthusiast Communities Justify and Normalize Image-based Sexual Abuse
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kaylee Williams
Nonconsensual, sexually explicit deepfakes represent a new and insidious form of gender-based violence, merging advanced artificial intelligence with entrenched misogyny to exploit women’s images at an unprecedented scale. While existing legislative and platform-based interventions primarily frame the issue as an extension of “revenge porn,” there is limited empirical research examining the motivations behind the creation and dissemination of sexually explicit deepfakes. This study addresses this gap through an observational analysis of deepfake enthusiast web forums, where pseudonymous users discuss, create, and exchange AI-generated intimate images. By employing theoretical frameworks from gender-based violence studies, masculinities literature, and feminist theory, this research uncovers the primary motivations and cultural norms underlying deepfake abuse. Contrary to the assumption that deepfake pornography is primarily created out of malice toward its subjects, findings indicate that perpetrators often justify their actions as expressions of admiration, technical experimentation, or as a means of gaining validation within online communities. The analysis further reveals how anonymity, peer validation, and shared technical interests contribute to the normalization and proliferation of deepfake abuse. By situating this emerging phenomenon within broader discussions of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) and networked misogyny, this study provides critical insights for policymakers, platform regulators, and gender-based violence researchers seeking to develop more effective intervention strategies.
A New Museum of Digital Culture: A Place for New Media and Digitally-oriented Curatorial Practices
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Constança Babo
In the current digital culture era, museums face the urgency to adapt, and expand, namely through embracing and applying the continuously evolving new technologies. For once, the new media, either through the form of artworks, either as tools and platforms, demand the reframing on how to present, exhibit, and mediate art. It so happens that the technological and digital developments that are occurring over the past years unfold as a series of disruptions, and challenges, but also as new possibilities for museums. New media art especially, reshapes the relationships between art, public and museums, mainly through its digital objectualities that largely differ from traditional artwork practices. Also, they inaugurate new forms of mediation, as well as a new understanding and use of the space. New exhibition formats and new architectures emerge by a digitally oriented curatorial practice, confronting the standard museum white cube frame. At the same time, new platforms emerge and become recognised as efficient and autonomous exhibition spaces, such as the ones located on the internet. As a result, there’s a rupture with the understanding of the museum as the only and main exhibition space. Within this context and having as a reference Malraux’s concept of the museum without walls, we propose and contemplate the emergence of a new museum, one that is as fluid, and hybrid as the new media themselves.
