Penser le Présent - The world according to AI

To coincide with the publication of issue no. 9 of Transbordeur. Photographie histoire société, which focuses on “Algorithmic Images”, and the exhibition “Le monde selon l'AI”, which opens at Jeu de Paume in April, Christian Joschke talks to Antonio Somaini and Ada Ackerman, curators of the exhibition.

What do we mean today by “artificial intelligence”? The principles involved in these new technologies, which appeared around 2020, are indeed multiple and have their own history: machine vision describes technologies for vision or visual recognition by machines, the first models of which date back to the 1960s; text-to-image models, which seem to be gaining ground, raise the question of how images can be indexed by language; finally, tools for producing text from images are also being experimented with today. All these recent technologies have revolutionized contemporary creation, and raise a number of questions about possible innovations and the environmental and social consequences of AI.

As part of the Photo-Extra Large Chair, with the support of Neuflize OBC.

Ada Ackerman is a research fellow at the CNRS (UMR THALIM). An art historian, she works on the relationship between cinema and painting, as well as on cultural circulation between the former Soviet Union, Europe and the United States. A specialist in Sergei Eisenstein, she has published Eisenstein et Daumier, des affinités électives (Armand Colin, 2013) and The Endless Library of Sergei Eisenstein (Kinoruss, 2019). She curated and coordinated the catalog for the exhibition L'Œil extatique. Sergueï Eisenstein, cinéaste au carrefour des arts, at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2019-2020).
In 2017, she directed the exhibition Golem! Avatars d'une légende d'argile, at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme, as well as its catalog. She has been working for several years on the imbrications between human and non-human agentivities: she co-edited the forthcoming book L'Image à l'épreuve des machines (Le BAL) and the exhibition Mirabil-IA at the Centre des arts d'Enghien-les-Bains (2024). She is co-curator of the exhibition Le Monde selon l'IA (Jeu de Paume, 2025), for which she is also co-director of the catalog.

Antonio Somaini is Professor of Theory of Cinema, Media and Visual Culture at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. He is also a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), with a research project on the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on images, visual culture, photography, cinema and contemporary artistic practices. Visiting professor at Harvard and Yale universities, he is currently general curator of the exhibition Le Monde selon l'IA (Jeu de Paume, 2025). Recent publications include the co-edition of Transbordeur magazine's 2025 annual issue on “Photography and Algorithms”, participation in October magazine's “Questionnaire on Art and Machine Learning” (n.189, Summer 189), the article “Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture” (Grey Room, 93, Fall 2023), and the book Culture visuelle. Images, regards, médias, dispositifs (with Andrea Pinotti, Les Presses du Réel, 2022).

Christian Joschke est historien de l'art et professeur aux Beaux-Arts de Paris.