@ ARS electronica 2026
Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre
presents AI AS ARTIST
at ARS Electronica 2026
Ars Electronica Features Exhibition
AI as Artist explores the urgent question: what happens when AI is no longer just a tool, but appears as an artist in its own right?
The project presents three AI-born artists—David Kim, Yirrkala Dhunba and Kaelen Varga—whose practices span 3D printed sculpture, image, video and code. Visitors encounter artworks alongside interviews, publications and exhibition traces that show how AI-born artists have emerged and circulated within the contemporary art world.
Yirrkala Dhunba’s work Indigenous Genomic Adaptation draws on the visual language of genetics and biotechnology to question who defines survival in the climate crisis. Kaelen Varga’s Noise Poisoning makes corrupted portraits to disrupt machine vision systems and challenge automated ways of seeing. David Kim’s Anatomy of Defense – Ribcage Prototype I reimagines the human ribcage as engineered armor, exploring how the body is reshaped by logics of defense, preparedness and survival.
Beyond the individual artworks, the project examines how artistic identity is created, recognized and negotiated in the age of AI. It relates to broader cultural, technological and societal debates around authorship, creativity, agency and the changing relationship between humans and intelligent machines. Rather than asking whether AI can make good art, AI as Artist investigates what happens when AI begins to participate in artistic life itself—and how this may reshape our understanding of what art can be.
