Prompt Poetry Against Propriety – Anti-Aesthetic Intelligence (aAI)

A workshop exploring the lexicon of forbidden imagery with Adam Zaretsky.

This workshop, led by Adam Zaretsky, will engage participants in both individual and collaborative experiments in prompt poetry, followed by critical exchanges around AI‑generated imagery, video, and other media. It will examine the combined effects of data glut and human curation when confronted with an overwhelming stream of algorithmic production.

These exercises will be followed by discussions on the impacts of AI in relation to authorship, kitsch, algorithmic bias, platform dependency, antisocial applications, search‑driven surveillance society, and censorship. The group will also debate the role of shock aesthetics more broadly, as well as AI anti‑aesthetics understood as a form of intelligence—situated somewhere between cultural terror and spectacular technology.

The workshop will explore connections between the collective unconscious and engineering‑driven biases, examining how emotional affects intersect with the mathematics of free association and broader psychoanalytic enigmas. It will also address questions of explicit media, extreme bodily imagery, and mediated cultures of violence linked to the military‑industrial entertainment complex.

The session will conclude with a reflection on Loop Slop AI and the modelling of long‑term feedback effects.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is a trigger promise, not a trigger warning. We seek people desiring to go into the forbidden in the art beyond censorship and propriety. Disgust is a goal here. Disgust is an energy.

ABOUT ADAM ZARETSKY:

Adam Zaretsky, Ph.D., is a former researcher at MIT’s Department of Biology and an experimental bioartist with over a decade of teaching experience. His art practice critically explores the legal, ethical, social, and libidinal implications of biotechnological materials and methods, with a particular focus on transgenic humans. Known for his engaging, hands-on bioart labs, Zaretsky creates dynamic spaces for bioart production.

He has led the VivoArts experimental bioart class at institutions including San Francisco State University (SFSU), SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), The Arts and Genomic Centre (TAGC) at Leiden University, and the Waag Society. He is the Head of Research at Nadlinc (since 2016) and a Research Consultant at BEAK (since 2022) in New York. Since 2024, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts at the Ionian University, where he also serves as the Creative Director of TTTlabs and TTTfellows in the “Rewilding Cultures” project (2022–2026), part of the Feral Lab Network, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.