Impact,art,and ennui: Toward a (neural)phenomenology of generative AI art

Abstract

This art-as-research autoethnography examines the disruptive influence of generative AI, positioning it at the nexus of augmented reflection and mediated normalization. It contrasts the stimulating role of creative stress, here posed as an essential resistance to complacency, with the destructive disinterest of Baudelaire’s ennui, a mediated depletion of resistance. AI emerges as a pharmakon, a dualistic tool that offers both a path to creative self-awareness and the risk of succumbing to systemic control. Adopting the perspective of neural phenomenology, affords an investigation of this ambiguity through generative text-to-image synthesis, asking how human poiesis – authentic creative emergence – can be maintained in socio-technical ecologies. The paper addresses the potential for cultural homogenization, proposing that the risk of AI model collapse might extend into culture, leading to a generic, sterilized ‘artificial creativity’. This research therefore advocates a balance that acknowledges and preserves an essential human uniqueness against the backdrop of algorithmic integration.

Keywords

computational poetics distributed subjectivity perspectival affordance stress affective aesthetics cognitive metaphor autoethnography AI pharmakon model collapse modal collapse neural phenomenology

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