Radical AI: Experimentation, Aesthetics and Critical InterventionsFriday 13 November 2026, 14:00 – 15:15

The Emergence of Aesthetics

Mattia PaganelliLecturer in Computational Arts Goldsmiths, University of London

When ‘art’, ‘creativity’, and ‘aesthetics’ are invoked within the same sentence, how are these terms deployed? What is concealed by the commonly encountered equations ‘creativity = art’ or ‘art = aesthetics’ through which the question of AI, creativity, and art is formulated?

If the claim that Creative AI is an epistemological as well as an aesthetic question is to be taken seriously, as it should be, it may turn out that the terms of the problem need to be radically rearranged.

This talk will unpack these concepts and propose an alternative to the traditional understanding of aesthetics as sensorial experience, drawing instead on nonlinear concepts such as Parisi’s broken symmetry.

Radical AI: Experimentation, Aesthetics and Critical Interventions

Friday 13 November 2026, 14:00 – 15:15

Chair: Viktor Bedö — Royal College of Art

This panel explores unconventional approaches to AI through artistic and scientific experimentation, aesthetics and critical practice. It challenges established definitions of computation, intelligence and agency, including approaches that locate computational processes within biological, living and material systems. The discussion asks how alternative models of intelligence might reshape creative agency and aesthetic experience.