We are not numbers—or so we’d like to believe. Yet in our increasingly digital world, everything must be described, quantified, and reduced to numbers. The practice of digital artists—whether in music, poetry, visuals, or beyond—is no exception. Every artistic gesture, from striking a key on a digital piano to typing code into a terminal, is translated into a number.This raises a profound dilemma: If my gesture is a number, do I become one too? Or must I concede that there is no true connection between my creative act and its numerical representation? The number "1" belongs to no one, yet it claims to represent us all. So how can my engagement with the materiality—or immateriality—of the digital renew my sense of artistic self?In this talk, I’ll explore the tension between artistic expression and the quantification of creativity—a dynamic that AI may have exacerbated, but which ultimately traces its roots to the very birth of our digital (and not analogue) era.
Period
19 Nov 2025
Held at
Center for Digital Narratives, e Humanities Faculty, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway