Comics as Computation with Ilan Manouach
Comics as Computation with Ilan Manouach
Griffin Smith and RISD are pleased to welcome Ilan Manouach to the course Art and Artificial Intelligence.
Griffin Smith and RISD are pleased to welcome Ilan Manouach to the course Art and Artificial Intelligence.
In the fast-evolving world of computational creativity, the potential impact of AI technologies on comics, a medium that has historically served as a laboratory for today’s global entertainment industries, is a case in point. With the term "synthetic comics," the talk Comics as Computation proposes to describe comics content that was generated, modified or manipulated in a highly automated manner by way of machine learning.
In the fast-evolving world of computational creativity, the potential impact of AI technologies on comics, a medium that has historically served as a laboratory for today’s global entertainment industries, is a case in point. With the term "synthetic comics," the talk Comics as Computation proposes to describe comics content that was generated, modified or manipulated in a highly automated manner by way of machine learning.
While this emergent practice certainly challenges the established craftsmanship traditions, it forces us to requalify comics in terms of Big Data, and to revise the extent of automation in the comics industry’s history. Ilan will also be presenting some of his earlier published work of conceptual comics, and more recent work that was co-created with emergent AI such as Out Side, Fastwalkers, the Neural Yorker and Chimeras (ed.), a collective glossary on AI with 150 contributors.
While this emergent practice certainly challenges the established craftsmanship traditions, it forces us to requalify comics in terms of Big Data, and to revise the extent of automation in the comics industry’s history. Ilan will also be presenting some of his earlier published work of conceptual comics, and more recent work that was co-created with emergent AI such as Out Side, Fastwalkers, the Neural Yorker and Chimeras (ed.), a collective glossary on AI with 150 contributors.
Ilan Manouach
Ilan Manouach
Ilan a postdoctoral scholar on "Computational Creativity" at the University of Liège and an affiliate scholar at Harvard metaLAB and a member of the Institute for Climate Sound & Society. He is the author of over 25 comic books (some of which are co-created with AI) and the editor of Chimeras. Inventory of Synthetic Cognition, a collective glossary on AI, with 150 contributors exploring a variety of epistemic perspectives on artificial intelligence : interspecies, crip, monstrous, feminist, distributed, and decolonial, among others. He is an appointed expert on the comic book industry to the Belgian government and worked as a strategy consultant for the Onassis Foundation. He is the founder of comics research non-profit Echo Chamber (Expanded publishing: Creative Europe 2023-2025), and the founder of Topovoros Books, a Greek publishing house spearheading translations of cornerstone essays in humanities. He is the co-creator of the cartoon AI-generator “The Neural Yorker,” and his work is the subject of a dedicated Routledge critical anthology. His upcoming book, Out Side, is a collaboration with K Allado-McDowell, founder of Google’s AMI program.
Ilan a postdoctoral scholar on "Computational Creativity" at the University of Liège and an affiliate scholar at Harvard metaLAB and a member of the Institute for Climate Sound & Society. He is the author of over 25 comic books (some of which are co-created with AI) and the editor of Chimeras. Inventory of Synthetic Cognition, a collective glossary on AI, with 150 contributors exploring a variety of epistemic perspectives on artificial intelligence : interspecies, crip, monstrous, feminist, distributed, and decolonial, among others. He is an appointed expert on the comic book industry to the Belgian government and worked as a strategy consultant for the Onassis Foundation. He is the founder of comics research non-profit Echo Chamber (Expanded publishing: Creative Europe 2023-2025), and the founder of Topovoros Books, a Greek publishing house spearheading translations of cornerstone essays in humanities. He is the co-creator of the cartoon AI-generator “The Neural Yorker,” and his work is the subject of a dedicated Routledge critical anthology. His upcoming book, Out Side, is a collaboration with K Allado-McDowell, founder of Google’s AMI program.