Walking As Method, Part 2

The present panel attracts scholars with a vested interested in the resistance to the growing use of AI in the context of visual scholarship. With AI-imaging progressively becoming a popular tool available to an ever growing amount of people we are progressively witnessing the incorporation and normaliziation of AI tools in matters of visual communication at large. But how are scholars interested in the meaning of images in human life responding to this? How will it progressively affect our conventional research practices? AI plays already a key role in our science communication in modalities ranging from different forms of post-production to more drastic interventions at the level of content (removing items that cannot be shown, adding elements of context etc.). Yet, the use of AI has been already accepted in the context of text and writing visual research can still provide a valuable terrain for re-discussing our approach to this terrain.

Positioning ourselves against the banalization of AI tools and technologies in the context of research we aim to attract scholars who enquire into the consequences of this shift addressing some of these possible questions:

What are the accepted forms of engagement with AI for visual scholars? What is completely to be banned?

What are the key differences with regards to how AI can be used in visual VS written scholarship?

What are the ethically acceptable uses of AI?

Does AI constitute a simple prolongation of automated image tools such as for instance HDR or is is something entirely new?