Spring 2026 - CA 825 G100
New Approaches in Digital Art Studies (5)
Class Number: 4323
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 5 – Apr 10, 2026: Mon, 9:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
GOLDCORP
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Instructor:
Claudette Lauzon
lauzon@sfu.ca
Office: SFU Woodward's, room 2320
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Examines current research in the history and practice of digital art. Specific topics will vary according to the research interests of the course instructor. May be repeated once for credit if both the instructor and topic are different.
COURSE DETAILS:
Course topic:
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON A.I. IN ART
Grading
NOTES:
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Required readings will be drawn from this bibliography:
Critical Perspectives on AI in Art: Bibliography
Abbate, Janet, and Stephanie Dick, eds. Abstractions and Embodiments. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.56021/9781421444383.
Alkhatib, Ali. “Defining AI.” Blog. Ali Alkhatib, December 6, 2024. https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai.
Amerika, Mark. My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence: A Speculative Fiction. Stanford University Press, 2022.
Antonopoulou, Caterina. “Algorithmic Bias in Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence: Critical Perspectives through the Practice of Women Media Artists and Designers.” Technoetic Arts 21, no. 2 (2023): 154–74.
Apprich, Clemens, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Florian Cramer, and Hito Steyerl. Pattern Discrimination. University Of Minnesota Press, 2019.
Audry, Sofian. Art in the Age of Machine Learning. The MIT Press, 2021.
Baas, Michiel. “Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Creativity: Art, Data and the Sociocultural Archive of AI-Imaginations.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 27, no. 4 (2024).
Bajohr, Hannes. “Algorithmic Empathy: Toward a Critique of Aesthetic AI.” Configurations 30, no. 2 (2022): 203–31.
Bender, Emily M. “Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of ‘AI.’” Current Directions in Psychological Science (Los Angeles, CA) 33, no. 2 (2024): 114–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231217286.
Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Harper, 2025.
Benjamin, Ruha. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity, 2019.
Bozard, Zachary. “What Does It Mean to Create Art? Intellectual Property Rights for Artificial Intelligence Generated Artworks.” South Carolina Journal of International Law & Business 20, no. 1 (2023): 83–101.
Bridle, James. Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.
Broussard, Meredith. Artificial Unintelligence. The MIT Press, 2018.
Broussard, Meredith. More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech. The MIT Press, 2024.
Brown, Oliver. Beyond the Creative Species. The MIT Press, 2021.
Buolamwini, Joy. Unmasking AI. Random House, 2023.
Caramiaux, Baptiste, and Sarah Fdili Alaoui. “‘Explorers of Unknown Planets’: Practices and Politics of Artificial Intelligence in Visual Arts.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (New York, NY, USA) 6, no. CSCW2 (2022): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555578.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition. The MIT Press, 2021.
Craig, Carys J, and Ian R Kerr. “The Death of the AI Author.” SSRN Electronic Journal 52, no. 1 (2019): 31–86.
Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctv1ghv45t.
Darling, Kate, ed. Against Reduction: Designing a Human Future with Machines. The MIT Press, 2021.
Downey, Anthony, ed. Trevor Paglen: Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations. Sternberg Press, 2024.
Dyer-Witheford, Nick, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen, and James Stenhoff. Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism. Pluto Press, 2019.
Hermerén, Göran. Art and Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Hertzmann, Aaron. “Can Computers Create Art?” Arts 7, no. 2 (2018).
Hessler, Stefanie, and Jenny Jaskey, eds. Agnieszka Kurant: Collective Intelligence. Sternberg Press, n.d.
Hui, Yuk. Art and Cosmotechnics. University Of Minnesota Press, 2021.
Hunt, Eileen M. Artificial Life After Frankenstein. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
Ivakhiv, Adrian J. The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies and Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds. Stanford University Press, 2025.
Kingwell, Mark. Singular Creatures: Robots, Rights, and the Politics of Posthumanism. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.
Knight, Yana, and Palosaari Eladhari. “Artificial Intelligence in an Artistic Practice: A Journey through Surrealism and Generative Arts.” Media Practice and Education, 2025, 1–18.
Lazzeretti, Luciana. The Rise of Algorithmic Society and the Strategic Role of Arts and Culture. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
Lewis, Jason Edward, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite. “Making Kin with the Machines.” Journal of Design and Science, July 16, 2018. https://doi.org/10.21428/bfafd97b.
Machado Oliveira, Andreia. “Future Imaginings in Art and Artificial Intelligence.” Journal of Aesthetics & Phenomenology 9, no. 2 (2022): 209–25.
Manovich, Lev. AI Aesthetics. Strelka Press, 2018.
Manovich, Lev, and Emanuele Arielli. “Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art and Visual Media.” 2024 2021. https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/artificial-aesthetics.
Mazzone, Marian, and Ahmed Elgammal. “Art, Creativity, and the Potential of Artificial Intelligence.” Arts 1 (February 2019): 1–9.
McQuillan, Dan. Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. Bristol University Press, 2022.
Mehta, Simran. Unraveling the Environmental Impact of AI : Opportunities and Challenges. SAGE Publications, 2024.
Merchant, Brian. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Little, Brown, 2023.
Miller, Arthur I. The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity. The MIT Press, 2020.
Mollick, Ethan. Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Portfolio, 2024.
Narayanan, Arvind, and Sayash Kapoor. AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference. Princeton University Press, 2024.
Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018.
O’Gieblyn, Meghan. God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning. Anchor Books, 2021.
O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown, 2016.
Paglen, Trevor. How to See Like a Machine: Art in the Age of AI. Verso, n.d.
Pasquinelli, Matteo. The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence. Verso, 2023.
Pelillo, Marcello, and Teresa Scantamburlo. Machines We Trust. The MIT Press, 2021.
Ritchin, Fred. The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI. Thames and Hudson, 2025.
Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. Verso, 2020.
Russell, Stuart J. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Penguin Books, 2020.
Sadowski, Jathan. The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. University of California Press, 2025.
Sautoy, Marcus Du. The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI. Harvard University Press, 2019.
Scheuerman, Morgan Klaus, Kandrea Wade, Caitlin Lustig, and Jed R Brubaker. “How We’ve Taught Algorithms to See Identity: Constructing Race and Gender in Image Databases for Facial Analysis.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4 (2020): 1–35.
Shaw, Mia S, SR Toliver, and Tiera Tanksley. “The Internet Doesn’t Exist in the Sky: Literacy, AI, and the Digital Middle Passage.” Reading Research Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2024): 690–705.
Somaini, Antonio, ed. The World through AI: Exploring Latent Spaces. JBE Books, n.d.
Steyerl, Hito. Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War. Verso, 2017.
Steyerl, Hito. Medium Hot: Images in The Age of Heat. Verso, 2025.
Vickers, Ben, K. Allado-McDowell, and Bill Sherman, eds. Atlas of Anomalous AI. Ignota, 2020.
Voigts, Eckart, Robin Markus Auer, Dietmar Elflein, Sebastian Kunas, Jan Röhnert, and Christoph Seelinger, eds. Artificial Intelligence - Intelligent Art?: Human-Machine Interaction and Creative Practice. Transcript Verlag, 2024. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839469224.
Wasielewski, Amanda. Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning. The MIT Press, 2023.
Yanisky-Ravid, Shlomit, and Luis Antonio Velez-Hernandez. “Copyrightability of Artworks Produced by Creative Robots, Driven by Artificial Intelligence Systems and the Concept of Originality: The Formality - Objective Model.”.” SSRN Electronic Journal 19, no. 1 (2017).
Zeilinger, Martin. Tactical Entanglements: AI Art, Creative Agency, and the Limits of Intellectual Property. Meson Press, 2021.
Zhou, Nengfeng, Vijayan N Nair, Harsh Singhal, and Jie Chen. “Bias, Fairness and Accountability with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Algorithms.” International Statistical Review 90, no. 3 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1111/insr.12492.
Zylinska, Joanna. AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams. Open Humanities Press, 2020.
Zylinska, Joanna. The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI. The MIT Press, 2023.
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Graduate Studies Notes:
Important dates and deadlines for graduate students are found here: http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/current/important_dates/guidelines.html. The deadline to drop a course with a 100% refund is the end of week 2. The deadline to drop with no notation on your transcript is the end of week 3.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.
To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit:
- SFU’s Academic Integrity Policy: S10-01 Policy
- SFU’s Academic Integrity website, which includes helpful videos and tips in plain language: Academic Integrity at SFU
RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION
Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.