Encountering Spiking Neural Networks

Over the past two decades, the term "intelligent media" has surfaced to describe media that take on problematics of cognition, communication, and sensory perception loosely modeled after human intelligence. Taking the form of hardware-software assemblages, these novel media demonstrate forms of autonomy that challenge human control and herald a complete redistribution of the sensible and agential. The aim of this article is to illuminate the shifting boundaries of nature and artifice as these figure in relations between humans and computational machines in the emergent computational culture of the 21st century. Its specific focus is on art-making where the medium or materials of art have been dematerialized and figure as "intelligent" and generative in their own right. Based on a historical discussion of art-making practices and the analysis of an artistic workshop organized by the authors, this article stakes out a much-needed study of the other-than-human agency of artificial entities.