Art and Cosmotechnics

In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today?

Charting a course through Greek tragic thought, cybernetic logic, and the aesthetics of Chinese landscape painting (山水, shanshui— mountain and water painting), Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge to art and philosophy posed by contemporary technological transformation. How might a renewed understanding of the varieties of experience of art be possible in the face of discourses surrounding artificial intelligence and robotics? Departing from Hegel’s thesis on the end of art and Heidegger’s assertion of the end of philosophy, Art and Cosmotechnics travels an unfamiliar trajectory of thought to arrive at a new relation between art and technology.

Yuk Hui is author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (Minnesota, 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, and Recursivity and Contingency. He teaches at the City University of Hong Kong.