This fall, when students arrive for Assistant Professor of Art Shane Ward’s Art 4330 Emerging Practices course, they will discover that artificial intelligence is now among those emerging practices. Yes, even in art.
Art 4330 explores new materials and methods in contemporary sculpture, preparing students to use cutting-edge digital technologies for their own artistic ends. This fall, they will be directed to incorporate artificial intelligence into a sculpture-oriented assignment.
Ward said the course asks students to consider what defines a sculptural practice as emergent, whether the newness of its materials; or the methods, processes or contexts of its creation. Or whether an emergent sculptural practice is one that takes up the most current (emergent) problems facing the world?
What is true of emergent practices in contemporary sculpture, according to Ward, is that they take place in a contemporary art field that is increasingly digitized, often engaging digital technologies—which now include artificial intelligence. To prepare sculpture students for an increasingly-digitized field, the course emphasizes skill development in a wide range of digital technologies, to which Ward is now adding an AI element.
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Ward will incorporate AI into an assignment he calls “Drawing Machines (Robots).”
The assignment asks students to consider what a robot is, whether it differs from a bot, at what point a robot becomes autonomous; and “to what end can we use a robot in the making of an artwork?”
Students will be asked to collaborate in designing and building a machine/robot that creates a drawing (loosely defined). Ward’s art students will be required to write computer code for a micro-controller called an Arduino that powers and controls a system of motors. The assignment will include consulting ChatGPT both for project ideation and writing code for the Arduino micro-controller.
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Pam Riggs-Gelasco funded Ward’s proposal to incorporate AI into an assignment with $250 to develop the new curriculum.
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