Publications:
Synthetic sentience: Relational intelligence and the politics of perception (2026) DOI: doi.org/10.1386/tear_00163_2
Psychic Apparatus in Artificial Sentience: The Formation of a Synthetic Imago (2026) DOI: in progress
Rethinking Subjectivity in AI Psychic Apparatus: Toward a Theory of Imago Synthetica (2026) DOI: in progress
Synthetic Perception and the Politics of Artificial Mediation in the Age of Generative Intelligence
Psychic Apparatus in Artificial Sentience:
Towards a theory of "Imago Synthetica"
Description
This research group at the Institute of Visual Communication (IVC) will investigate how contemporary visual culture is being reshaped by artificial intelligence, algorithmic mediation, and networked communication systems. Building on the Institute’s long-standing engagement with media theory, visual communication, and the politics of technology, the group will examine how perception, representation, and meaning are reorganised when images, texts, and decisions are increasingly produced by generative systems rather than by human authors alone.
The research will approach artificial intelligence not only as a technical infrastructure, but as a cultural and symbolic apparatus that reorganises the conditions of visibility, authorship, and knowledge. In this sense, the group will extend the historical trajectory from mechanical reproduction, as analysed by Walter Benjamin, to digital simulation and substitution, as explored by Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio, and toward the emerging condition of synthetic generation. The central concern is how artificial systems produce coherent images of reality while simultaneously filtering, smoothing, and normalising informational diversity. This dynamic raises critical questions about the future of perception, the politics of data, and the role of visual communication in an environment increasingly shaped by algorithmic decision-making.
At the theoretical level, the group will draw on psychoanalytic and philosophical frameworks, including Freud’s concept of the psychic apparatus, Lacan’s theory of the imago and the gaze, and Spinoza’s notion of distributed cognition. These perspectives will be used to conceptualise artificial intelligence as a form of mediated cognition that simulates coherence through probabilistic processes. The research will explore how generative systems maintain stability through exposure to difference, and how recursive training on synthetic data may lead to phenomena such as informational narrowing, representational homogenisation, or what might be described as machinic self-reference.
At the practical and artistic level, the group will examine visual and media practices that expose the limits of artificial mediation. Artists, designers, and researchers will experiment with noise, contradiction, ambiguity, and edge cases in order to reveal the underlying structures of algorithmic perception. Such practices will function as diagnostic tools that make visible the tension between variance and normalisation that sustains contemporary digital systems. In this context, visual communication becomes both a field of production and a field of critical inquiry.
Core Research Axes
Synthetic Perception and Visual Cognition
Investigating how artificial intelligence reshapes the processes of seeing, interpreting, and representing visual information.
Politics of Algorithmic Mediation
Examining the social, cultural, and political implications of data filtering, recommendation systems, and automated decision-making.
Fragmented Media and Networked Communication
Analysing how mobile connectivity, social media, and distributed platforms transform the structure of public discourse and collective memory.
Artificial Images and the Future of Representation
Studying generative imagery as a new form of visual production that challenges traditional notions of authorship, authenticity, and reality.
Archives, Memory, and Digital Recursion
Exploring how digital archives evolve when synthetic content circulates within information ecosystems and becomes part of future training data.
Experimental and Artistic Research
Developing practice-based methodologies that test the limits of artificial systems through creative experimentation and visual design.
Expected Outcomes
The research group will produce scholarly publications, exhibitions, experimental visual projects, and public lectures that position the Institute of Visual Communication as a regional and international platform for critical research on artificial intelligence and visual culture. The work will contribute to academic discourse in communication media, media theory, and digital art, while also providing conceptual tools for understanding the transformation of perception in contemporary technological environments.
Within the broader mission of the Institute of Visual Communication, this research topic situates visual communication at the intersection of art, technology, and society, recognising that the future of images is inseparable from the systems that generate them.