Conference blurb

Combining digital art history with critical AI studies, the group explores AI not only as a tool but also as a cultural phenomenon with important implications for the humanities. The conference investigates the reciprocal relationship between artificial intelligence and visual culture, looking at how AI systems both shape and are shaped by histories of seeing. We welcome both international experts and the group’s first two members.

Fabian Offert, Vector Media: Towards a Materialist Epistemology of Artificial Intelligence

Vector Media offers a media theory of the black box, tracing how deep neural networks encode latent ideologies through their internal architectures—particularly the technique of embedding, which turns all media into abstract, commensurable vectors. Rather than focusing solely on datasets or outputs, Vector Media explores the epistemic shift that embeds historical models of vision, perception, and meaning within neural infrastructures, revealing how AI models do not just process media but model media itself. Drawing on Phil Agre’s “Critical Technical Practice,” we argue that this transformation produces a new kind of epistemology—neural exchange value—where cultural objects gain significance only through their operational equivalence within machine learning systems.