Two articles published with my friend Miguel Carvalhais on the implausibility of human understanding of machinic art. These were born out of our longstanding discussion on the possibility of consciousness in artificial minds: in short, Miguel thinks it is possible — as there is probably nothing special on human wetware —, and I think that it is not — as I believe the subject/object, mind/body, software/hardware, etc. divisions to be merely analytical.
After sharing a sizable amount of readings on the matter and happily disagreeing for long discussion sessions, we realized that there was something that we did agree on: if machine consciousness is possible — and that, at least for me, is quite a big if — and if those conscious machines one day decide to create art, we humans will not understand it. The exploration of the consequences of that idea lead to two articles: an academic one, published at ISEA 2018, and shorter one, published on the online magazine aeon.
