The AI Work of Art in the Age of its Co-Creation

Almost one century after Walter Benjamin’s dissertation on the value of the work of art under the impact of its technological reproduction on the roots of globalization and mass media society, the current research aims to provide some coordinates to approach the influence of AI co-creative processes in the artistic field. From a media archaeological approach, we will map the collaborative practices that emerge in the Generative Art landscape to understand the creative possibilities of interaction between humans and machine-driven artistic goals. By conceiving the Web 3.0 as an expansive megadungeon, we find an increasing number of projects based on participative dynamics where online communities join forces with AI decentralized artists to reshape the current state of the art. We will take as an example the Botto Project, a community-driven creator conceived by Mario Klingemann, a pioneer of AI artworks who employs machine learning methods to revolutionize the blockchain and crypto art market. This case study leads us to reconsider the (wo)man-machine co-creation as the base of the auratic experience of the work of art in the age of AI co-creativity.