McKenzie Wark: From Automatic to Automated Writing

A public lecture by writer and theorist McKenzie Wark rethinking historical avant-garde debates on the ‘conceit of the author’ through the prism of AI and generative text.

“There's been a blizzard of hype about so-called "AI" that can write, much of it seemingly written by it. The debates about this circle around a particular notion about what a writer is and does. The debates assume that authors are the origins and owners of "their" textual worlds, and that what attest to their authorship is at least a minimal amount of "originality." Therefore AI becomes an author if its product is “original,” and the dispute turns on whether it meets that criteria.

But what if an author is not the origin of the text? Let's take a walk through a century of challenges to this notion, from surrealist automatic writing to dada cut-ups, fluxus chance methods, oulipo rule-sets and situationist détournement. Perhaps it's more that texts make authors than that authors make texts. If texts make authors, this upends the conceit of authors as little god-creators of their textual worlds, which is the basis of an author's copyright claims, and livelihood.” - McKenzie Wark

Jennifer Walshe: Is It Cool To Try Hard Now?

Irish composer Jennifer Walshe's IS IT COOL TO TRY HARD NOW? (2017) is a multimedia performance for voice, film and electronics, which playfully and subversively explores how internet cultures and life-lived-online have changed what it means to ‘make an effort’, be authentic and express joy.

“I’m trying to give a picture of what it feels for me to be around now. What technology is doing to us as people. Not just technology in and of itself, but how it affects our relationships, how we live in the world, our ideas about our own bodies, how to relate to one another. Because if you perform happiness on social media, it is always rewarded, at least on social media. You are okay, you are okay, you are okay, despite what the doctors say.” - Jennifer Walshe

Presented with ADM+S, non/fictionLab, Music Industry Research Collective as part of This Hideous Replica. Supported through the RMIT Design and Creative Practice Enabling Impact Platform

This program is a part of Replica School. A replica of a school, a school of replication. A hideous school foregrounding replication. An expanded program of performances, talks, workshops, screenings and other uncanny encounters taking place at RMIT and various venues in Melbourne.