Artificial intelligence experience
Christopher J. Wood · 2021
In this chapter, I discuss my art and research practice in relation to issues around artificial intelligence (AI) and the possibility of conceptualizing AI experience. By “experience”, I mean the speculative possibility of how an AI may experience either the world or their own functionality. This possibility has the potential to tap into imaginaries around AI, acting as a form of research that can help human participants reflect back on their sociotechnical practices and offer a generative route to new ontological understandings. I frame this as “poetic methods”, a term I use to describe the work I conduct at the overlap of art and research. I give an account of these methods, drawing on techniques from critical making and speculative design. I then detail how I used these techniques in a participatory workshop and subsequent installation at the Zaratan Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal. I describe the themes that emerge from the workshop and how I worked with and against them in constructing the final installation. I conclude by discussing the successes and limitations of the techniques, what they can do to thicken and enrich imaginaries and research framings around AI and some suggestions for their transferability to colleagues’ work.