The parallels between the 1920s, the Roaring Twenties, and our era, both marked by the shadow of war, resonate deeply. While the1920s witnessed the aftermath of World War I and the looming threat of another global conflict, today we grapple with the specter of nuclear war amidst ongoing conflicts. In both periods, there is a pervasive sense of disillusionment and uncertainty about the future. From this disillusionment emerged the Dadaist movement. Dadaism, rooted in absurdity and nonsensical expression, served as a rebellion against the social norms and values that led to the devastation of war. It sought to dismantle the prevailing cultural order, signaling a rejection of the systems that perpetuated conflict. Central to Dadaist art was the concept of automatism, the spontaneous and unconscious creation of art. Artists embraced chance and randomness, allowing their subconscious to guide their work. This rejection of rationality and deliberate meaning challenged traditional notions of art and expression. Fast forward to today, where we witness the rise of generative AI image platforms. These platforms, powered by algorithms and data, operate in a realm similar to artistic automatism, producing images guided by computational processes rather than human intention. They represent the pinnacle of automatism, blurring the lines between human creativity and artificial intelligence. In my own artistic practice, I draw from these AI platforms to reinterpret the Dadaist poetics. By feeding original verses into the generative AI, I provoke the system to engage with its own web of references and associations, generating responses that, after undergoing a series of conventional graphic processes, reflect a fusion of human and machine thought. This process not only initiates a dialogue with the AI system but also challenges arbitrary notions of authorship and creativity, bringing AI into the sacred space of art.

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Roger Monteiro