Digital Anti Art and the Cultural Dynamics of Algorithmic Platforms
Media scholar Daniele D’Orazi invites participants to critically investigate how AI, recommendation algorithms, and meme culture are redefining the boundaries of authorship, originality, and aesthetic value in the digital age.
This 2-hour workshop explores how algorithmic platforms, artificial intelligence, and digital cultures are reshaping artistic production, authorship, and aesthetic value. Participants will examine how recommendation systems influence creative practices, how AI blurs the boundaries of authorship, and how remix culture challenges originality.
Through a mix of short talks, hands-on exercises, and group discussions, attendees will critically engage with contemporary questions such as:
- Is everyone an artist in the age of platforms?
- Are memes a form of cultural production or anti-art?
- What happens to originality when everything can be endlessly reproduced?
Programme
Part 1: How algorithms shape artistic identity and digital expression - is everybody an artist nowadays? Are memes a form of art?
An introduction to how digital platforms shape visual culture and artistic identity.
Topics:
- Recommendation systems
- Platform aesthetics
- Attention economies
- Viral visual languages
- Metrics influencing creativitiy
Exercise: “Explore the Nothingness”
Part 2: AI‑driven post‑artistic narratives and machine‑generated creativity - how AI is helping creating new artists and killing the poetry of the creative process
Exploring machine-generated creativity and the changing role of the artist.
Topics:
- AI-generated images, text, and music
- Prompting as authorship
- Dataset aesthetics
- Synthetic creativity
- Infinite cultural production
Exercise: “Machine Prompt / Human Image”
Working in pairs, participants combine AI-generated text with selected images to create speculative social media posts.
Break
Part 3: The shifting meaning of originality in an era of constant reproduction - art is theft said Picasso, so steal like an artist
A critical reflection on appropriation, repetition, and post-authorship.
Topics:
- Remix culture
- Memes
- Appropriation and repetition online
- Aesthetic recycling
- Post-authorship
Exercise: “Mutation Chain”
Participants iteratively transform an initial concept into a meme, a tagline, and a political slogan, revealing how ideas evolve through collective reinterpretation.
Part 4: Ownership, Ethics, and Cultural Memory
A concluding conversation on authorship, ownership, and the role of algorithms as cultural archives.
Topics:
- AI training datasets
- Copyright and attribution
- Artistic ownership
- Collective intelligence
- Algorithms as archives
Final reflections
Learning References
The workshop draws on ideas from:
- Walter Benjamin
- Hito Steyerl
- Lev Manovich
- Jean Baudrillard
Key concepts include: algorithmic culture, platform aesthetics, post-authorship, remix culture, computational creativity, and the attention economy.
Workshop ringmaster
Daniele D’Orazi is an Italian media scholar, digital marketer, artist, and educator working at the intersection of digital culture, visual communication, and contemporary art.
He began his career as a lifestyle journalist in Milan, later producing early online video content for GQ, and developing an internationally exhibited photographic practice. He is the author of B.A.D. MARKETING: (Anti)manuale di Marketing Punk/Dada/Post-whatever.
D’Orazi has taught digital branding, innovation, and sustainability for the luxury fashion industry at institutions including Istituto Marangoni, NABA, and IED. Alongside his academic and creative work, he has also spent time working as a fisher in Norway.