The aesthetics of AI - from cyberpunk to fascism

Talk presented at PyCon DE & PyData 2025 (Darmstadt, DE)
https://pretalx.com/pyconde-pydata-2025/talk/933YXH/

Let’s explore the visual grammars, references and cultural norms at play in the field of AI; from Kismet to Spot®, from Clippy to Claude. As a sector we can be hyper-focused on technical process and function, to the extent that it blinkers our understanding of the cultural and political impacts of our work. Aesthetics infuse every aspect of technology. Aesthetic interpretations are manifold and mutable, constructed in-congress with the observer and not fully defined by the original designer. AI technologies add additional layers of subtext: character, consciousness, agency, intent.

Despite this murkiness, or perhaps because of it, this talk makes an passionate argument for engaging with historical aesthetic movements, for building our shared professional knowledge of fads and fashions⎯not just from the past 40 years of internet culture⎯but also the past 140 years of ideology, technology, and thought.

Transcript

1. Laura Summers & Javier Candeira PyCon DE & PyData 2025 the aesthetics of from cyberpunk to fascism
2. first, a quick
7. A view of Habitat 67 in Montreal viewed from the old port Image ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67
8. "It's still the most radical building I ever built, and that's after 55 years of practising architecture," he said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/moshe-safdie-habitat-67-montreal- asia-1.5237223
9. https://www.ignant.com/2019/05/16/ignants-guide-to-brutalism-in-berlin/
11. defining
12. Aesthetics as a vision of beauty and goodness Discobolus of Myron made in Munich by combining the Lancelotti head with the Vatican body, 5th century https://artincontext.org/famous-greek-statues/
13. Berlin Summer Style - Photography Laura Schaeffer https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/gallery/32409/28/berlin-summer-street-style
14. Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets and electrons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
15. Trigger warning Nazi and fascist imagery
17. aesthetics and
18. Clippy vs Claude
20. How are these mascots aesthetically different?
21. How are these mascots aesthetically similar?
22. https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-buttholes
23. https://www.tesla.com/de_de/cybertruck
24. Aesthetic references
26. Aesthetic intentions https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsan_Achmatowitsch_Kadyrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2077
27. Bullshit and Fascism https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini-g enerative-inaccurate-historical
28. Fascist Italian Futurism versus the Nazis' "Entartete Kunst"
29. "The world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed (...) We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, [and] beautiful ideas worth dying for." -- Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurist Manfiesto, 1909 "Move fast and break things" -- Mark Zuckerberg, letter to investors, 2012 https://artmejo.com/how-italian-futurism-influenced-the-rise-of-fascism/
30. Uber vs OpenAI
31. Uber - bits and atoms (8 years old) https://youtu.be/XB7HlxwSeoA?si=3fKZrf1rtbNGNb79
32. OpenAI - ChatGPT | The Intelligence Age (2024) https://youtu.be/kIhb5pEo_j0?si=H_oojRgzrgxMb0dm
33. “New American Futurism”
34. aesthetic
36. Data centers as aesthetic artefacts
38. https://www.middletowndatacenter.com/
39. in