Comics as Computation

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. 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.