Workshop | »Practical Aesthetics: Outlines of an Epistemological-Institutional Program / ARTILACS – Artistic Intelligence in Latent Creative Spaces« @ AEC Congress and General Assembly 2026

Vom 4.–7. November 2026 findet der AEC Congress and General Assembly 2026 unter dem Motto »From Institution to Interaction: Responsive Education and Relevant Practices in the Arts« an der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (HfMT) statt. Nina Deuse, Benjamin Helmer, Lina Marchallek, Benjamin Sprick, and Francisco Uberto bieten einen Workshop zu Practical Aesthetics an: »Outlines of an Epistemological-Institutional Program / ARTILACS – Artistic Intelligence in Latent Creative Spaces« an.

Sprache: englisch

Abstract

Practical aesthetics is an aesthetics that can be applied. It does not exist solely as a theoretical concept or an abstract form of reflection, but always unfolds within concrete situations, relationships, and contexts of action. In this sense, it has already begun: it takes place in networks of interaction, collaboration, and perception and continually evolves through relational processes. Aesthetics appears here not as a finished work or detached observation, but as a dynamic practice of collective thinking, experiencing, and producing.

The Co-Creation Space takes this perspective as its starting point and examines the extent to which such a practical aesthetics can give rise to a sustainable form of epistemology—a practice of knowledge that centers on openness, processuality, and collective participation. At the same time, it explores how this perspective can be combined with new forms of agile institutionalization. The central challenge is thus to understand artistic research not merely as an individual project or specialized academic field, but as a collaborative space for thought and action that connects diverse actors, forms of knowledge, and dimensions of experience.

Through various artistic, performative, and discursive inputs (live composition; role-play; body-based practicies) and with the participation of doctoral candidates from the Dr. sc. mus. program at the HfMT, the question will be explored spatially and situationally: how can artistic research productively intertwine with traditional academic formats such as the doctoral program, publication, or discussion? This is not merely about supplementing existing models, but about developing hybrid forms of research in which aesthetic experience, critical reflection, and collective practice intertwine. The space itself is understood as an epistemic medium: an environment in which knowledge is not merely conveyed, but performatively produced and collectively negotiated.

In this sense, the Co-Creation Space conceives of research as an open process shaped by interaction and relationships. Here, knowledge does not emerge linearly or hierarchically, but through processes of exchange, translation, and shared imagination. Artistic methods serve as tools to make alternative perspectives visible, to experiment with new forms of collaboration, and to make social issues tangibly experiential.

The aim of the format is to outline a participatory, sustainable, and value-creating space for thought and action in which aesthetic, political, and social aspects are intertwined. The Co-Creation Space invites us to understand research as a living process of collective engagement with the world—as a practice that continuously transforms itself in dialogue with contemporary challenges and opens up new possibilities for collective action.

As a technologically optimized form of »collective intelligence«, AI prompts us to rethink and modify artistic production, organization, and reflection. The group, the community, the team – all are relational media gaining significance in the age of »algorithmic reason«. AI appears not merely as a tool, but as an infrastructural condition of collective knowledge and imagination processes, shifting established notions of authorship, creativity, and aesthetic practice.

This Co-Creation Session unfolds these reflections through the central ideas, questions, and structures of the collaborative research project ARTILACS, which is dedicated to a critically affirmative engagement between ›AI‹ and ›art‹. It presents both theoretical foundations and concrete perspectives on collaborative research, experimental methods, and new practices at the intersection of machine learning, artistic research, and media cultural techniques. Within the Co-Creation Space, we actively engage in collaborative, experimental work with AI and music.

At the core is the concept of »artistic intelligence«, reducible neither to human genius nor machine calculation, but understood as an emergent, relational, and situated practice. Concurrently, the project analyzes ›latent‹ knowledge spaces: those hidden semantic, affective, and cultural structures generated, organized, and reproduced by Large Language Models.

Together, we want to explore how these language models can be repurposed and subverted for a politics of the ›in-between‹ – beyond logics of efficiency, optimization imperatives, and techno-solutionist promises. The focus is on how AI-based systems can act as experimental media to make intermediate spaces of thought, perception, and collaboration experiential.

The exponential pace of technological development and the sheer surplus of knowledge increasingly confront us with an »epistemological overload«. Faced with this epistemic overwhelming, the goal is not to reactively reject progress, but to pivot it productively as a critical affirmation. To navigate this state methodically and unlock these intermediate spaces, the group utilizes the conceptual tool of »Digital Idiocy«. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers’ philosophical figure of the idiot, who resists the pressure of quick consensus, we understand »digital idiocy« as a deliberate deceleration within the instrumental rationality of algorithmic systems. Instead of unquestioningly accepting AI outputs as ready-made solutions, this approach refuses solution-oriented efficiency to establish a creative zero point.

As a cross-institutional collaborative project (HfMT, HAW, HFBK, and HCU Hamburg), ARTILACS aims to actively shape the AI discourse from a decidedly artistic perspective. AI is interrogated both epistemologically and technologically: What opportunities does AI open up for art, and what technological conditions does it impose? And how can artistic practice invert these relations: What conditions and demands does art place on AI?

Workshop by Nina Deuse, Benjamin Helmer, Lina Marchallek, Benjamin Sprick, and Francisco Uberto