Operative Ekphrasis: The Dissolution of the Text-Image Distinction in Multimodal AI
April 7, 2023
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
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Download iCal FileDr. Hannes Bajohr, Zurich’s Collegium Helveticum Presents:
The relationship between text and image has been a longstanding concern of aesthetic theory. On the one
hand, it has invited strong formalist calls for their separation as entirely distinct media whose aesthetic
integrity requires that they be kept separate; on the other hand, such dreams of purity have been rebuked as
misguided because “there are no visual media” (W.J.T. Mitchell). This talk proposes that state-of-the-art
instances of “multimodal AI” both complicate the relationship between text and image and help us to rethink
it. Multimodal AI – particularly text-to-image machine learning systems like Dall-E 2 or Stable Diffusion –
collapses the distinction between text and image by circumventing this separation altogether; at the same
time, it brings both mediums into a new performative constellation: language here produces images in a
process of “operative ekphrasis” that is distinct from older, strictly algorithmic techniques. The talk develops
this concept by way of examples from visual poetry; argues for a new role of language in our digital present;
and shows how new technologies both require conceptual analysis and can themselves serve as catalysts for
conceptual innovation.
Date posted
Jan 17, 2023
Date updated
Feb 28, 2023