Shane Denson is Professor of Film and Media Studies and, by Courtesy, of German Studies and of Communication at Stanford University, where he also serves as Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought & Literature. His research interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to film, digital media, and serialized popular forms. He is the author of Bride of Frankenstein [film|minutes] (2025), Post-Cinematic Bodies (2023), Discorrelated Images (2020), and Postnaturalism: Frankenstein, Film, and the Anthropotechnical Interface (2014). See shanedenson.com for more information.

Abstract

What is the significance of AI for aesthetics? How does AI relate to aesthetic categories or the conditions of aesthetic experience? These are the questions that I am looking at in my current book project, tentatively titled Art and Artifice, or: What AI Means for Aesthetics. The project examines AI art—mostly visual works made with machine learning—as critical sites for understanding the cultural and perceptual transformations brought about by artificial intelligence. As tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion become embedded in everyday life and visual culture, artists using these and related technologies play a vital role in defamiliarizing them, prompting reflection on their aesthetic and social implications. Rather than treating AI art as novelty or provocation, I aim to foreground its phenomenological dimensions: how these works feel, how they engage the senses, and how they reshape the conditions of experience.