Beginning with the example of GANGgajang’s song The Sounds of Then, this discussion explores whether or not there is such a thing as an Australian sound in popular or rock music. Of particular concern are the actions of transnational corporations, the Internet and governments in the creation or subversion of such a notion. Sometimes national or transnational groups appropriate regional or local identities in order to ‘infiltrate’ a society. Such groups are often concerned with misappropriation of ‘the local’ in order to acquire a particular hegemonic position. Rather than resisting the forces of global capital, so-called ‘local’ sites may indigenise aspects of Imperialist cultures. However, ignoring the reality of contemporary global organisations is folly. Not only that, but ‘local’ cultural forms will always survive so long as there are those that wish to have a ‘voice’ of their own. And, in the case of rock music, is the national point of origin really all that much of an issue?

This article proposes that the contemporary philosophical disagreement between dialectics and Object Oriented Ontology should be understood as a repetition of a debate in Lacanian film theory which began in the 1980s. What is at stake in both exchanges is the critical relationship to subjectivity—its reduction to an ideological illusion or the radical reappraisal of the concept. Following an initial survey of the key moments and theorists in both contentions, the affinity between the philosophical work of Quentin Meillassoux and the film theory of Christian Metz and Jean-Louis Baudry is considered. While distinct in their approach, these thinkers are united by an emphasis on subjective de-exceptionalization, each pinpointing a moment of hubris in which the subject assumes themselves reflected in the world, or cinematic image. For Meillassoux, Metz, and Baudry, this mirroring ultimately has pernicious effects, as the material preconditions of subjectivity are left unaccounted for, and illusion is accepted as real. In this respect, they share a critique of idealism. In their respective critiques, the work of Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan insists upon the cinematic screen and ontology as conflictual sites, characterizing the cinema spectator (and by proxy, the philosophical subject) as a rupture within ideology rather than running parallel to it. From this dialectical standpoint, the duality between idealism and materialism is sublated through the recognition that both positions intrinsically rely upon each other. Placing these debates side by side elucidates the interconnected histories and theoretical concerns of cinema and philosophy, particularly within cinematic and philosophical idealism.

This paper turns towards a film that you could not have seen and will never see: The Mark of the Brief Night, part of the web-based and installation film project Seances (2016) by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, and the National Film Board of Canada. Seances generates never-to-be-repeated short films by algorithmically combining scenes from a database of reimagined lost silent-era movies recreated by Maddin. The uniqueness of The Mark of the Brief Night, emphasised by its imminent loss, highlights the indelible role of the spectatorial process in the actualisation of film as lived phenomenon, at the same time raising questions regarding the virtual (ideal) being of film before and beyond its concrete actualisation. I am arguing that any cultural trace, just like The Mark of the Brief Night, makes sense (where sense is understood both as a vector between the ideal plane and actuality and as a surface effect that denies the identity of the actual with itself) only inasmuch as it becomes part of embodied processes of individuation. Turning towards the role of the other in the dynamic of individuation, the paper proposes that spectatorship constitutes a stringent and much-neglected ethical responsibility in contemporary cultures.

The paper reconsiders style transfer with generative adversarial networks (GANs) as a powerful means towards a machinic extraction of perception, one that learns how to imitate how a human might spatially abstract, translate and eventually create designs. The aim is to investigate the potential of deep learning a mapping between two domains, one being the perceived reality of an urban scene, and the other, its representation on a sketch. The creative discipline under consideration in this paper is that of architecture.

This paper considers how creative agency can be positioned as part of visual art practice that involves humans and machines working together. Examples analysed include projects where complex “intelligent” software systems support text creation, or the combination and transformation of digital images, alongside one where a human artist works with a physically instantiated robotic arm to co-create drawings. The paper’s argument uses ideas from actor-network theory (ANT) and more object-oriented perspectives to theorise agency not only as emerging from the association of humans and machines in networks, but also with the specific humans and machines involved in each creative project.

The aim of this conceptual article is to challenge the attribute “creative” when applied to the technical nonhumans (computers, robots or AI). Whilst acknowledging the long history of technical objects involved in a creative production, I suggest that such phrasing carries a surplus of meaning that may lead to ambiguous and possibly deceptive narratives about technical nonhumans amongst non-professional audiences. I shall be using STS theories as a methodological backdrop, and I shall rely on the theoretical paradigms about the myth of technology.

This article analyses how the impacts of AI technologies on creative work have been identified and constructed. The concept of imaginaries is used as a methodological and analytical approach to analyse a variety of grey literature sources published in the UK. The analysis highlights three interconnecting risk imaginaries in which creative occupations are differentiated from other occupations – they are safe and/or are being complemented, but are not being replaced by automation. The construction and implications of these imaginaries are questioned in two ways. Firstly, the concept of assemblages highlights the everyday role of AI technologies in creative production. Secondly, analysis of portfolio working and multiple job holding problematises the notion of safe creative occupations. This article argues that the relationship between AI technologies and creative work can be partly understood as enhancing creative production and the opportunities for creative work, and partly understood in terms of uncreative production and non-creative work.