Dimitris Agathopoulos is an independent New Media Artist.

His artistic research and work focus on creating Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences and narratives, algorithmic art, AI-aided art, 3D sculpting, 3D modeling, experimental animation, sound design, digital scenography, projection mapping, and painting. He teaches 3D Design in the MA in Digital Arts program at the Athens School of Fine Arts, and he also instructs courses in Plastic Arts with Digital Media and Digital Audiovisual Representations at the Department of Interior Architecture in the School of Applied Arts and Culture at the University of West Attica.

Art and Artificial Intelligence as Cultural Condition

The theory of deconstruction, as articulated by Jacques Derrida and widely incorporated as a practice within the field of art, particularly in postmodern and structuralist analyses of contemporary culture, introduced new thematic and methodological orientations in artistic production. These approaches focused on the study and exposure of texts, narratives, and representations that constitute contemporary ways of life, subjecting the structures of meaning that govern them to critical examination. Within this cultural framework, technology is not approached simply as a tool but as a carrier of meanings, ideologies, and modes of perception. Under these conditions, many artists turned toward the field of Artificial Intelligence, seeking to engage with it not only as a technological achievement but as a domain of critical reflection and cultural inquiry. The encounter between art and AI highlighted the importance of a specialized artistic discourse that reflects an era marked by intensive research, invention, and experimentation aimed at understanding and artistically engaging the cultural potential of emerging technologies.

Developments in knowledge, industry, and technology gradually influenced not only the instruments of everyday life but also the very mode of operation of human cognition. In this context, artists do not remain confined to the role of observer or user. They participate actively in shaping and interpreting technological media, even when their work articulates reservations or critical positions toward rapid technological expansion. In the field of Artificial Intelligence in particular, Norbert Wiener’s theories of communication, control, and feedback established foundational concepts for understanding the relationship between human and machine, not only at a scientific level but also within artistic inquiry.

The increasing integration of digital technologies into all domains of life led to the gradual transformation of traditional artistic media into digital forms through computational processes. Artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, and video now employ digital technologies to expand their practice, sometimes foregrounding the aesthetic qualities of the digital medium and at other times incorporating processes that remain imperceptible to the viewer. Within this condition, artistic practice extends toward research and experimentation, to a significant degree independent from immediate commercial imperatives. At the same time, dominant research in Artificial Intelligence focuses on the development of systems capable of speech recognition and visual information processing. Applications such as speech to text systems, voice input interfaces, voice controlled devices, and automated conversational agents perform specialized functions without embodying cognitive processes in the human sense. Similarly, image and pattern recognition systems rely on complex computational models which, despite their technological sophistication, are rarely framed as cultural or experiential phenomena.

This distance between technological functionality and human experience renders artistic engagement with Artificial Intelligence particularly significant. As functions once considered exclusively human began to be successfully simulated by computational systems, a hybrid figure of the artist researcher emerged, combining artistic production with scientific investigation. Within this framework, art becomes a field for examining not only what an intelligent system can do, but how it is perceived, experienced, and assigned meaning within human contexts.