Towards a framework for artistic intelligence

Artistic intelligence is a mode of knowing that works through making and interpretation, grounded in embodied creative practice and, increasingly, in the encounter between human meaning-making and machine computation. It is anticipatory rather than predictive, sensing when a pattern is about to change instead of extrapolating from one already established. Its characteristic outcome is categorical novelty – a distinction that had no place in the record when the work was made, and which later organises practice. The note states these claims in terms that can be tested. It defines the term, names the operations through which the mechanism runs, states the conditions it requires, and specifies what would show it to be wrong. It identifies holding open as the operation on which transformation depends, derives five requirements for the systems, spaces and tools now being built around cultural practice, and proposes a design concept to meet them. The framework draws on four decades of practice where culture and emerging technologies meet, and in particular on instances where artistic methods shaped outcomes outside the arts – in technology design, societal innovation and policy.