Editor's Note

The latest developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have dramatically transformed and redefined today’s landscape of communication, media, art, and education. Within this context, critical theory provides an apt methodological framework for analyzing and understanding such complexities and new societal and cultural challenges imposed by current technological innovations. Having in mind recent changes of the role of critical theory in comparison to its heyday during the 20th century, this issue of AM Journal of Art and Media Studies aims to explore novel interdisciplinary theoretical models in social sciences and humanities (new theories, concepts, and critical vocabularies) pertinent for the analysis of AI and its widespread influence.

             A theoretical framework conceived in such a way allowed contributions from distinctive disciplines and fields such as communication studies, media and art theory, philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, psychology, pedagogy, and political studies. Therefore, acknowledging various relevant topics – critical theory in the post-digital age, contemporary AI based art/media practices, impact of AI on pedagogy, education, and learning, etc. – this special issue seeks to offer new perspectives on fundamental questions that emerged with the advent of a transformative yet controversial phenomenon of AI.

             Main Topic section opens with Hans-Georg Moeller’s contribution to critical and emergent media theory in digitally grounded contemporaneity. Three of the following articles address relation between AI and contemporary artistic and media practices: Maryam M. Hassan, particularly focusing on GAN and AICAN deep learning models, investigates the impact of AI on photography today; Uroš Krčadinac and Jacques Laroche, choosing as their case study a participatory algorithmic art project based on the generation process of different flags, elucidate how algorithms construct as well as commodify our digital identities; Jelena Novaković, in her interdisciplinary rapport between the discourses of art theory and ecology, conceives of a possibility that plant life could be a creative part of AI art practice. Afterwards, two papers consider how AI redefines and changes the status of knowledge and institutional education, and introduces new ethical and moral dilemmas, respectively: Predrag Krstić explores the idea behind the artificial lifeform education and deconstructs its broader consequences on the traditional humanist paradigm; Bojan Blagojević, through concepts of personhood, embodiment, and sensitivity to pain/pleasure, suggests a new reading of a moral status of AI. Finally, the last two articles map out and critically examine new digital and technological challenges within the current global and local media landscape: Nikola Mlađenović and Slobodan Penezić critically deepen the concept of media populism in the context of present-day neoliberal processes of mediatization, whereas Ilija Milosavljević analyzes both imposing limits and potentials of the employment of algorithms in small media markets.

Guest Issue Editor: Dr Luka Bešlagić, Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia; Dr Simona Žikić, Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia

Reviewers: Sanja Bojanić (Academy of Applied Arts, University of Rijeka, Croatia), Ljubiša Bojić (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia), Goran Bulatović (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Danica Čigoja (College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE), Nikola Dedić (Faculty of Music, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia), Boško Drobnjak (Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, Serbia), Irena Javorski (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Srđan Korać (Institute for Political Studies in Belgrade, Serbia), Jelena Matić (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Jasna Milošević Đorđević (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Sandra Nešić (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Vladimir Popov (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia), Goran Tomka (Faculty of Sport and Psychology, Educons University, Novi Sad, Serbia)

On the cover: