Jan Svenungsson Book order

Artists always react to the times in which they live. They may celebrate them or criticize them, often trying to change them. But this is the first time in history that technology controlled by private companies is offering to replace the work of writers, musicians, illustrators and visual artists. What impact will generative AI have on how we create art and how we understand what art is for? How will it affect the role of the artist in the future and the conditions under which artists will work? Jan Svenungsson tackles these questions, investigating what AI might do for art, and what it might change, circling the core issue of what it is in human art-making that cannot be replaced.

The book presents the entire graphic works of the artist Jan Svenungsson, who has been responsible Graphics and Printmaking at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna since 2011, accompanied by a text that seamlessly combines practical information, stories and speculations in an entertaining way. His overarching objective is to critically discuss the meaning of graphic prints in contemporary art, and more specifically: to illuminate the role of single-handedly „making“ them – at a time when the conditions for exercising creativity are undergoing rapid change: What are the implications of the tools the artist selects? What does authenticity mean in today’s art? How does the role of the artist change when he makes himself dependent on artificial intelligence?

Organized by the department for Graphics & Printmaking at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the exhibition “Thought Machines” includes student work from Vienna as well as from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest; the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava; the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig and the Royal College of Art, London. All participants in the exhibition share a platform in being students of printmaking. From this point of departure they develop projects which inhabit the whole range of contemporary art-making possibilities. What binds these projects together is that they all address the concept of “Thought Machines” which is discussed by Jan Svenungsson in an introductory text.