September 11, 2024
What is art?
Charlotte Kent ’98 Investigates AI and Artby Allyson Irish
It’s been nearly 30 years, yet the memories are crystal clear. Writing for The Phillipian. Participating in Grasshopper Night. Taking dance classes.
“My experiences at Andover were so formative,” “In a way,” says Kent, “Andover is always on my mind.”
An associate professor of visual culture and head of visual and critical studies at Montclair State University, Kent is busy these days. In addition to her work in the classroom, she is spending time on a research grant from Google’s Artists + Machine Intelligence Program and recently began a two-year National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study global artists and the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)—like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion.
Kent’s research aims to better understand how the increased use of AI by the general public and in the arts impacts artists’ notion of agency across cultures, as well as the perception of the art itself.
Is it “cheating” for photographers to enhance their photos with technology? Is a painting not considered art if AI was used in the process?
“My focus has to do with anxiety over the perceived loss of artistic agency because of machine learning models like generative AI. Things have certainly changed in the artistic world, and that means we need to think deeply about how we want to use these technologies and not simply pretend they will go away,” says Kent. “The craft, the creative practice, the artist, and the effort that produces meaningful art will remain no matter the medium or tools that are used.”
Captions: Kent viewing Libby Heaney's "Q is For Climate", part of Lilypads: Mediating Exponential Systems at Nxt Museum, Amsterdam, co-curated with Jesse Damiani. (Photo courtesy of Tim Kent); Kent with her father, Ernest H. Latham, Jr. ’56; Kent in studio of Nancy Baker Cahill for City of Los Angeles, Individual Master Artist Projects interview. August, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Damiani); Kent in her Bushwick neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Tim Kent); Kent in studio of Tim Kent looking at works in progress. (Photo courtesy of Alex Estorick); 1998 friends in Chicago, November 2023. Back row left to right: Gillian Goldberg, Leah Willis, Grace (Dingledine) Woods Puckett, Katie Burke. Front row left to right: Alexandra Mulvey, Kent, Diana Bergren Fink; Panel Discussion on “Climate, Art, and Technology” with Alexis Rockman, Haley Mellin, Alisa Petrosovah, moderated by Charlotte Kent. Magenta Plains, NYC. (Photo courtesy of Carla Gannis); Kent with photographer Peter Molick. (Photo courtesy of Gillian Goldberg ’98)
It’s exhilarating work but also challenging. And leaning into the challenge is something Kent learned at PA.
Kent appreciates the breadth of her PA education, where she took classes in psychology and philosophy, wrote for the school newspaper, and learned about the work of a stage manager. “All of this helped to broaden how I thought about life,” she says.
She also has particularly fond memories of Vincent Pascucci, her Italian teacher whose class was limited to uppers and seniors and held every day at 8 a.m. sharp. Pascucci was strict and the class highly regimented, but it also came with some enjoyable perks like the espresso and Italian pastries he would bring to class on Fridays.
“The class made me recognize that I had made a big choice. I think a lot of people at Andover have had an experience like that, leaning into a huge amount of work and understanding that the joy of something doesn’t always equate to ease. That was an important lesson for me.”
Top photo by Danielle Ezzo
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