Something Rich and Strange
My PhD research investigates the creative potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in a visual art practice. To stimulate human/computer creative collaboration I introduce the imaging power of GenAI models to the words of William Shakespeare (1564 –1616). Text, themes, and lyrics written or performed in the years 1597-99 (when the poet was living and working in the London district of Shoreditch), are used as prompts in a ‘Creative Cybernetic’, psycho-geographic process of procedural interaction.
This collaboration between creative entities: living, dead, organic and computational, aims to reveal something of the genius loci – the persistent Character of Place – that impacts the emotions and behaviours of individuals who pass through it over time (Ackroyd, 2001, Debord 1955).
The research poses questions of authenticity, authorship, and how creative agency can be attributed. (Boden 2009, Kalpokiene & Kalpokas, 2023).
It proposes a collaborative role for artists as creative agents in a posthuman ‘cyborgian’ world (Haraway 1985) and examines the role of artistic practice in ‘bringing-forth out of concealment’ the underlying truths concerning the world-as-is that are revealed when technology is used not to satisfy a ‘will-to-mastery’ but as ‘a mode of revealing’. through creative industry (Heidegger 1954).
Contributions to Knowledge
Firstly, a practice methodology I term Creative Cybernetics. This way of working couples the feedback loops inherent in both living organisms and system design with the poetic, non-linear leaps of human creativity. This is positioned as an epistemological framework for understanding posthuman creativity, but also as a working method suitable for use in other creative fields. It proposes a means of collaborative interaction between human and non-human creative agents.
Secondly, it extends the tradition of psycho‑geographic dérive – the objective-free wanderings proposed by Debord and the Situationists – into a posthuman sensibility by showing that non‑conscious systems also drift, dream and annotate the imagined city in a ‘desrêves’. This encourages GenAI to wander through its data-scape as in a dream, combining and transforming without rationally intervening. The intention is to surface the system’s oneiric imaginings and through them better understand GenAI’s cognitive nature.
Thirdly, I introduce the term ‘Essence of Playce’ as both concept and process. This nodal intersection reveals the dynamic interaction of place, time, technology, and culture, achieved through speculative imaginings detached from functional purpose. It culminates in an exhibition held on April 23, 2025, (the presumed anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death) sited at the historical epicentre of Shakespearean theatre at 55 Curtain Road in London's Shoreditch.
Fourthly, I have produced new artworks which articulate and extend these themes. These are audio/video and 2-dimensional work employing ‘creative cybernetic’ dialogues between GenAI and myself, taking Shoreditch as a common theme. This dialogue is intentionally non-linear and dreamlike in order to limit any rationalised constraints I might inadvertently bring to bear, as well as to fully utilise GenAI’s ability to desrêves.
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