Ataraxia | Een inleiding bij de boekpresentatie van Sarah Grothus en Ricardo Liong-A-Kong.
Sarah en Ricardo hebben mij gevraagd iets te vertellen over het begrip ataraxia bij deze boekpresentatie. Ik doe dat graag (hartelijk dank voor de uitnodiging), maar, eigenlijk is er geen geschiktere uitleg denkbaar dan het boek dat zij hier vandaag lanceren zelf; het boek dat de naam ataraxia draagt.
Polished, primitive, or sophisticated | What videogame graphics can tell us about colonial and postcolonial aesthetics.
Abstract
In the past decade, the topic of (de)colonialism and videogames has received increasing attention from a growing number of scholars. From the beginning, many videogames involved colonial themes such as the conquering of foreign worlds, the extraction of resources, and the exploitation of enemy characters. Besides these direct colonial and imperial representations, numerous videogames also contain racist and sexist stereotypes with colonial roots. This thesis contributes to postcolonial games research by exploring colonial bias and colonial values in videogames from a visual lens. Whereas other studies often focus on colonial narratives and interaction in videogames, this thesis takes videogame graphics as a starting point. It applies concepts from aesthetic and decolonial literature to investigate specific cases of videogame graphics and scholarly evaluations of these graphics. The thesis argues that the colonial dichotomy of ‘superior’ Western people versus ‘inferior’ non-Western ‘others’ impacts the aesthetic evaluation of videogame graphics. Seemingly unproblematic adjectives such as ‘authentic’ and ‘sophisticated’ may signal underlying assumptions that link back to a colonial appreciation for modernness and Westernness. Next to aesthetic evaluations, the colonial tension between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ affects the visual style of videogame graphics. Based on Jacques Derrida’s (1998) concept of the ‘monolingualism of the other’, the thesis argues that ‘mainstream style’ videogame graphics are monolingual in a similar way to the monolingualism of many European languages in the (post)colonial world. Like these European languages, mainstream style videogame graphics signal a ‘superior’ technological Western culture and dominate other visual styles that appear less technological. The thesis applies Frantz Fanon’s (2001) notion of ‘violence’ to propose a solution to the monolingualism of mainstream videogame graphics; game designers can appropriate mainstream style elements or introduce new visual languages to disrupt or ‘violate’ the dominance of mainstream style visuals.
The Artist vs the Beast | Emotions & values in discussions on text-to-image generation in the creative industry.
Abstract
This paper explores the role of emotions in discussions among artists about image-generating AI in the creative industry. Conversations about machine-generated artwork are often highly emotional; both artists and non-artists experience intense feelings. The paper aims to utilise these emotions by applying Steinert and Roeser’s framework of frequently overlooked emotional aspects in responsible innovation and technology assessment (Steinert & Roeser, 2020). This framework helps locate and identify underlying concerns, values, and evaluations that may impact the acceptance and assessment of image-generating AI. The article analyses online conversations between artists, and artists and non-artists. The results show that although many positive feelings occur in discussions on AI art, frustration leading to anger and sadness is dominant in the discourse on image-generating AI. People are primarily frustrated over a lack of fairness and discuss different types of cheating. Dishonesty is experienced in the models’ development, use, and implementation. The paper concludes by suggesting further research on essential values and concerns in image-generation AI, particularly fairness. Further analysis of the emotions and worries about image-generation AI may be helpful in
the acceptance and implementation of this emerging technology.
