Étiquette : humanist digital artist

Digital Poetry and Post-Digital Practice: Toward a Humanist Reading of Contemporary Forms

Publié le Publié dans Poésie, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 1 Commentaire

What circulates no longer belongs to me, yet still carries my presence.

🟦 Read this article in French:
Poésie numérique et pratique post-digitale : vers une lecture humaniste des formes contemporaines

Minimalist charcoal line on white background with charcoal pieces, evoking visual poetry and fragmented writing

Introduction

Poetry has never stopped evolving alongside the mediums that carry it.
From manuscript to print, from page to book, from voice to recording, each technical transformation has reshaped its forms, rhythms, and modes of dissemination.

Today, poetry circulates within a profoundly transformed environment: the digital network, and more concretely, the web.
It unfolds through brief, visual, and fragmented forms, often designed to appear on screens, to be read quickly, shared, repeated, forgotten, and rediscovered.

In this context, it becomes possible to speak of contemporary digital poetry, not as a marginal genre, but as a widespread practice — even if it is rarely named as such.
These forms remain largely unnamed and insufficiently structured in discourse.

This article proposes to outline a reading of these practices by considering them as manifestations of a post-digital practice: a form of creation that is no longer defined by the digital itself, but by its natural inscription within the network.

A Widespread Practice, Yet Rarely Named

Thousands, even hundreds of thousands of artists today publish poetic forms on the web:

• short poems
• micro-poetry
• text-on-image works
• visual fragments
• contemporary haiku
• hybrid writings combining text and image

These forms are sometimes associated with specific practices such as instapoetry, often linked to Instagram.
However, this reality is now broader: digital poetry circulates across a multitude of platforms, personal websites, blogs, and diverse publishing spaces.

It is not confined to a single medium or platform, but rather unfolds within a network of circulations where poetic forms appear, transform, and move.

These works circulate across digital spaces. They are seen, shared, archived, sometimes forgotten — yet they all participate in the same phenomenon: a diffuse poetic presence within the network.

Despite this widespread presence, these practices are still rarely theorized as a coherent whole.
They are often perceived as marginal, informal, or tied to specific uses, rather than recognized as a contemporary form of poetic creation.

Despite their massive presence, these practices remain insufficiently identified as a global phenomenon of poetry in circulation on the web.

In this context, I do not claim to invent these forms, but rather to propose a reading of them, grounded in my own practice of Humanist Digital Art:
a way of articulating a practice that already exists, but remains only partially structured in discourse.

From Digital Poetry to Post-Digital Practice

The term “digital poetry” may suggest a rupture: poetry produced by or for digital technologies.
Yet in the current context, this distinction is becoming less and less relevant.

Digital poetry is often approached through its technological dimensions — code, interactivity, algorithmic generation — but these perspectives do not fully account for more discreet, brief, and widely circulated forms.

The digital is no longer a new or exceptional space.
It has become the everyday environment of creation, dissemination, and reception.

To speak of a post-digital practice is to recognize that:

• the digital is no longer the subject
• it is an environment
• a natural space of circulation

In this perspective, contemporary digital poetry is not defined solely by its tools, but by the way it exists within the network:

• it is designed for the screen
• it circulates within flows
• it is encountered in fragments
• it coexists with other forms (images, videos, texts)

Thus, post-digital poetry is less a category than a condition:
that of a practice embedded in an environment where the digital is omnipresent, yet no longer central.

Contemporary Forms of Digital Poetry

Several forms emerge within this contemporary practice. They are not exclusive, but constitute recurring tendencies.

Image-Poems

Text and image are no longer separate.
They form a visual-poetic unit, where meaning emerges from their relationship.

The poem is not a caption.
The image is not an illustration.
They coexist as a single form.

Micro-Poetry and Brevity

Brevity becomes central:

• a few lines
• a few words
• sometimes a single sentence

This brevity produces a flash of intensity:
a rapid mental image, an immediate sensation.

Contemporary Haiku

Inspired or not by Japanese tradition, contemporary haiku:

• capture a moment
• express perception
• favor simplicity and precision

They find in the network an ideal space for circulation.

Visual Digital Writing

Text becomes visual material:

• typography
• layout
• integration into the image

Writing no longer simply says — it shows.

Poetry in Circulation

These forms share a fundamental characteristic:
they are designed to circulate.

They appear in flows, disappear, and reappear elsewhere.
Their existence is inseparable from movement.

Poetic Form and Algorithmic Environment

The brevity, clarity, and visual strength of these forms are not only aesthetic choices.
They are also adapted to their environment.

Within the network, works:

• are seen quickly
• must capture attention
• must be immediately readable

Search engines, feeds, and AI systems participate in this circulation.

They do not create the works.
But they organize visibility, encounter, and sometimes disappearance.

In this context, certain poetic forms become particularly suited:

• short
• visual
• memorable

They can be quickly understood, retained, and sometimes relayed.

A Historical Continuity

These contemporary forms do not emerge from nothing.

They extend existing traditions:

• haiku and its brevity
• haiga (image–text compositions combining haiku and image)
• imagism and the precision of the image
• modern poetry and its formal ruptures

The digital does not create brevity.
It amplifies its reach.

It does not create the mental image.
It accelerates its circulation.

Thus, contemporary digital poetry belongs to a continuity, while transforming the conditions of its dissemination.

An Artistic Experimentation Within the Network

In this context, publishing becomes an act of creation in itself.

To create a work is also to:

• put it online
• let it circulate
• accept that it partially escapes its author

The network becomes a space of experimentation:

• works live there
• they are interpreted
• they encounter unknown audiences

The artist no longer fully controls the trajectory of the work.
They accompany its movement.

In My Own Practice

For several years, I have been developing forms of visual poetry and image-poems on the web, within this dynamic of creation and circulation.

These works take the form of short texts, often associated with images, where brevity, linguistic tension, and the relationship between word and image play a central role.

They are published across several series, including:

• Poetry & Images
• Visual Poetry & Digital Writing
• Social and Political Micro-Poetry
• The Carrier Pigeons — Haiku-Image Series

These series are part of a broader set of contemporary practices, where poetry unfolds in the network through brief, visual, and fragmentary forms.

My poetic works are written in French, while my reflective texts — such as this one — are also available in English.

What I publish does not remain fixed:
these forms enter flows of circulation, are seen, reused, and interpreted in various contexts.

They thus participate in a form of ongoing algorithmic performance, where the presence of the work extends beyond its moment of creation.

They contribute, in their own way, to this poetry in circulation, characteristic of post-digital practice.

A Humanist Reading of These Practices

Within the framework of Humanist Digital Art, these forms are not merely aesthetic objects.

They are human presences within the network.

Each poem, each fragment, each image:

• carries an experience
• an emotion
• a memory

Technology becomes a medium serving this presence.

The digital is not the subject:
the human is.

Conclusion

Contemporary digital poetry is not an exception.
It is already a widespread practice embedded in the uses of the network.

When considered as a post-digital practice, it becomes possible to think differently about it:

• not as a novelty
• but as a transformation of the conditions of creation and dissemination

In this perspective, it becomes possible to read these forms differently:
as a poetry that circulates, transforms, and continues to carry, despite everything, a human presence.

There is a part of humanity in every fragment of writing.

See also

These pages provide further insight into the concepts discussed in this article and explore concrete forms of digital poetry.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
🟦 How the Concept of Humanist Digital Art Was Born
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — A Global, Poetic and Digital Artistic Practice
🟦 Poésie visuelle & écritures numériques
🟦 Poésie & images — Série de poèmes-images et écritures numériques
🟦 Les pigeons voyageurs — Série de haïkus-images
🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Humanist Digital Art: A Global, Poetic and Digital Artistic Practice

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 6 commentaires

🟦 Read this article in French:
L’art numérique humaniste — Une pratique artistique globale, poétique et numérique

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Artistic self-portrait of Gilles Vallée overlaid with clocks, evoking memory, time and presence in the digital continuum.
What circulates no longer belongs to me, yet still carries my presence.

For several years now, I have been writing, creating, and publishing within the network.

Poems, poem-images, fragments of visual poetry, digital images, digitized physical works, hybrid texts, integrated videos: together they form a continuous practice… an ongoing media and algorithmic performance. Nothing was conceived to illustrate a prior theory. The practice came first, with its intuitions, hesitations, and constancy.

It is within this movement that what I call Humanist Digital Art (HDA) gradually emerged.

Humanist Digital Art is not a theory applied to my works; it is the conscious formulation of a practice already present within the network.

I am not trying to prove a theory. I observe that my artistic propositions already form a humanist corpus: memory, dignity, fragility, lucidity. HDA is simply a way of naming what was already in the process of existing.

Long before I put words to this approach, thousands of artists were publishing, sharing, and circulating digital works across the web. Circulation always precedes conceptualization. My work belongs to that continuity: creating, publishing, letting circulate, observing.

A Global Artistic Practice

HDA is not limited to a specific series or body of work. It unfolds through all the works I make public: individual poems, poem-images, digital writings, processed images, digitized sculptures, videos integrated into the site.

This practice is both poetic and digital. It embraces brevity, concentration, sometimes a certain sharpness. It explores memory, fragility, the human condition, dignity, lucidity in the face of reality. It seeks to maintain a human presence within a constantly transforming digital environment.

The poetic series I publish constitute structured groupings within this broader practice. They do not define it, but they make its coherence more visible.

Series as Visible Groupings

At the time of writing, three main series structure this work.
These poetic series are written in French, reflecting my identity as a Quebec humanist poet.

The series The Human Experience explores memory and the human condition. Poem-images become resonant surfaces, fragments of existence inscribed in time.

The series Short Poems on Grief and Death addresses absence and fragility through a brief, concentrated writing that refuses explanation in favor of space.

The series Social and Political Micro-Poems is rooted in present-day lucidity. These micro-poems name reality with an economy of means that may evoke contemporary forms such as Instapoetry, while remaining part of a broader reflection on digital writing and the circulation of images and words.

These series prove nothing. They make visible a coherence already in motion.

Art Has Always Circulated Through Networks

The diffusion of art has always been a matter of networks.

In the past, these networks were human: patrons, galleries, museums, critics, publishers.

Today, they are largely digital: platforms, search engines, algorithms, artificial intelligences.

One network or another does not change the fundamental necessity: art circulates. It travels. It always depends on a medium of transmission.

My works now move through this global digital space.

Digital Carrier Pigeons

About fifteen years ago, I maintained regular email correspondence. We referred to our exchanges as “electronic carrier pigeons,” recalling the winged messengers of the past. I did not yet know that, later on, my poems would also take flight across the network, like digital carrier pigeons.

Once published, the works no longer fully belong to me. They circulate, encounter unknown readers, become inscribed in contexts I do not control. Yet they still carry my presence.

What AI Reveals

By observing how several artificial intelligence systems describe my series, I have noticed a convergence in interpretation: memory, fragility, lucidity, humanist dimension.

I do not seek their validation. They decide nothing. Yet they reveal, in their own way, lines of force that were already present.

The source remains human experience. Writing precedes the algorithm. AI participates in global diffusion.

Conclusion: A Philosophy Proven Through Practice

Humanist Digital Art is not a concept detached from works. It is a way of naming a global, poetic, and digital artistic practice in motion within the network.

I continue to write, to publish, to observe.

The poetic series form structured groupings within this practice.

The practice as a whole — in its continuity and circulation — remains its living expression.

What circulates no longer belongs to me, yet still carries my presence.

To Explore Humanist Digital Art Further

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
🟦 Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Being an Artist Without a Stage, Without an Institution, But Not Without an Audience
🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Evolving Cartography of Humanist Digital Art

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , 14 commentaires
Abstract digital image combining a bare tree, visual glitches and fragmentation, suggesting the intersection of nature and algorithmic disruption.

This text offers a state of the field of Humanist Digital Art, as it currently unfolds through artworks, writings, and their circulation across the network.

Read this article in French
Cartographie évolutive de l’art numérique humaniste

🔹 Central reference page
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Conceptual landmarks, vocabulary, and relationships in motion

This evolving cartography proposes an update—a progress report on the ongoing performance linked to Humanist Digital Art.
It offers an initial assessment of the first four months of the process, as it has unfolded through works, texts, and their resonances within the network, search engines, and artificial intelligences.

An empirical approach rooted in experience

My approach did not emerge from a pre-existing theoretical framework.
It was built through practice, over the years, through the writing of poems, the creation of digital images, and their dissemination on the web.

Like many artists around the world, I have long been producing works that question human experience using technological tools. The web has never been for me a mere promotional space, but a place of creation, circulation, and encounter.

The words came afterward.
I simply named what I was living and observing in the reality of my practice.

Naming a practice: the emergence of Humanist Digital Art

Over time, I came to understand that what I was doing belonged to a form of humanist art deployed on the web.
An art that places human experience, memory, fragility, and dignity at its core, while fully embracing the use of digital technologies.

The expression Humanist Digital Art gradually imposed itself as an accurate description of this practice.
It does not designate only my own work, but a broader reality: that of a global artistic community, composed of thousands of artists who, in all regions of the world, use technology not as an end in itself, but as a medium for speaking about human experience.

This practice fully belongs to the field of contemporary art, extending some of its fundamental concerns: the relationship to the world, to society, to memory, to the body, and to the forms of mediation specific to our time.

It was never about creating a label, let alone a brand, but about recognizing an already existing practice.

Multiple practices, a shared attention to the human

Over time, careful observation of the web has allowed me to recognize the diversity of practices participating in this approach.
For a long time now, I have seen poets publishing their poetry online, forms of Instapoetry and digital writing emerging on social platforms, digital artists sharing images, painters and sculptors presenting their works, as well as videos, installations, and hybrid projects circulating freely across the web.

These practices, very different in form, share a common concern: speaking about human life, lived experience, memory, fragility, or dignity, using the digital realm as a space of dissemination, encounter, and sometimes creation.

The Manifesto as a first explicit reference point

After naming this practice, I felt the need to articulate my understanding more clearly.
It was in this context that the Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art was written.

This text was not conceived as a founding act in an authoritative sense, but as a reference point.
A conscious attempt to put into words an experience already underway, in order to make it readable, shareable, and open to discussion.

The Manifesto marks an initial stabilization of vocabulary, without freezing the approach.

Network reactions: search engines and artificial intelligences

Following the publication of the Manifesto, I observed concrete reactions from the network.
Search engines and artificial intelligences began to interpret, relay, and reformulate its content.

These reactions intensified with the publication of complementary articles on my blog, each one refining, deepening, or slightly shifting the understanding of this practice.

I did not seek to provoke these effects.
I observed them.

These interpretations remain external readings, not declarations of authority.

The gradual expansion of vocabulary

Over the weeks, certain concepts imposed themselves as ways of describing the observed reality more precisely.

I did not attempt to define a new artistic form.
I observed that a phenomenon was at work, and that language sometimes arrived afterward—and sometimes even before me, through readings and reformulations produced by artificial intelligences.

In this context, the following notions gradually stabilized:

Humanist Digital Art has asserted itself as a philosophy:
a way of thinking about digital creation by placing human experience, memory, dignity, and responsibility at the heart of the process.

Humanist Media Art corresponds to a global approach:
the conscious choice to create and disseminate on the web, considering the network as a medium in its own right, not merely as a neutral channel.

The Algorithmic Studio has emerged as a creative space:
a hybrid space where writing, images, digital tools, platforms, and algorithmic systems intersect, in an ongoing dialogue between human and machine.

Continuous Algorithmic Performance has appeared as a living form of the artwork:
not a punctual performance, but a long-term process unfolding over time, observed through its effects, echoes, and transformations.

These notions are not abstractions.
They serve to name what is already taking place within contemporary digital culture.

A performance that exceeds the initial intention

As these texts circulated, the performance took on a scope that exceeded my initial intention.

Without any direct intervention on my part, artificial intelligences began producing their own readings—describing me at times as a practitioner and theorist, an artist-researcher, an artist-thinker, sometimes as the founder of Humanist Digital Art.

Some of these readings go so far as to describe my posture as that of a “curator of the unpredictable”—a formulation I did not claim, but which I observe as another sign of how the network attempts to name what escapes it.

The concept itself has been interpreted as an emerging artistic movement, a school of thought, or a theory of art.

I did not claim these qualifications.
I observed them.

Documenting rather than controlling

From the beginning, I have simply been doing my work as an artist on the web, as I have done for years.

What has changed is that a performance has been set in motion within the algorithmic world.
A performance that does not take place on a stage, but within the circulation of works, texts, concepts, and interpretations.

Observing does not mean renouncing responsibility.
It means accepting that mastery no longer passes through direct control, but through the quality of the initial gesture and the attention paid to what unfolds.

My role is not to direct or control this performance.
It is to observe, to document, and to make readable what is taking place.

This evolving cartography does not claim to definitively fix Humanist Digital Art.
It accompanies an ongoing process, within a living, moving network.

Art is human. The performance is algorithmic.
What I create is born from human experience.
What then unfolds within the network follows algorithmic logics that I observe, without seeking to control them.

To situate this evolving cartography within the Humanist Digital Art corpus

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured reference page.

🟦 Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art
Foundational stabilization of vocabulary.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Clarifying a Thought in Motion
Conceptual hierarchy.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Transformation into a media project.

🟦 Algorithmic Performance in Continuum
Living form of the work.

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture
Infrastructure analysis.

🟦 Why I Continue to Write and Publish in a World Saturated with Technology
Ethical and human grounding.

© Gilles Vallée
Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2026

Understanding Dictators: Psychological Profile and Mechanisms of Power

Publié le Publié dans Art social & politiqueÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , , 1 Commentaire
Red background with white text denouncing dictatorships and dictators, stating that this message is essential to humanity’s future.

Understanding dictators and their mechanisms of power: a psychological analysis of authoritarian traits to better denounce totalitarian regimes.

Note: This article is the English translation of the French article « Comprendre les dictateurs : Profil psychologique et mécanismes de pouvoir ».

Denouncing Dictators for a Better Future

In a world where authoritarian regimes are gaining ground, it is crucial to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie dictatorships. This article explores the personality traits commonly found in dictators and the strategies they use to consolidate their power, in order to better identify them and denounce them.

Psychological Traits of Dictators

Context

My website presents my work in poetry and humanist digital art, but for this text I wanted to address the theme of dictatorship and the personality traits of dictators. This article moves away from poetry, yet art and poetry also have a social and political dimension…

In the current geopolitical context (with leaders and states driven by imperial ambitions), everyone must denounce dictatorships and dictators. This may not be poetic, but it is essential for the future of humanity.

I asked the AI ChatGPT to identify the psychological characteristics of dictators. Below is a concise list highlighting traits commonly found in these authoritarian figures: egocentrism, paranoia, manipulation, lack of empathy, cult of personality, among many others. These elements help us better understand their way of thinking and their obsessive pursuit of absolute power.

Video — Denouncing Dictators for a Better Future

This video complements the article Understanding Dictators: Psychological Profile and Mechanisms of Power.
It presents, in a slow and minimalist visual form, the main psychological traits commonly found in authoritarian leaders.

The video is not designed to entertain, but to create a space for reflection and awareness, allowing the viewer to pause and confront these mechanisms visually before engaging more deeply with the written analysis below.

The video offers a visual and conceptual overview of the patterns discussed in this article.
Below, the written analysis expands on these psychological traits, their mechanisms of power, and their consequences in contemporary geopolitical contexts.

LIST: PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAITS OF DICTATORS

Authoritarian leaders often share clearly identifiable psychological characteristics. Here are the most common traits observed among them:

Exaggerated Egocentrism

– Sees himself as a superior, infallible being

Pathological Narcissism

– Constant need for admiration and glorification

Paranoia

– Extreme distrust, obsession with conspiracies and imagined enemies

Lack of Empathy

– Total indifference to the suffering of others

Rigid Authoritarianism

– Refusal of any opposition, desire for absolute control

Manipulation and Deceit

– Mastery of propaganda, lies used as tools of power

Megalomania

– Desire for grandeur, oversized projects, cult of personality

Impulsivity and Aggressiveness

– Violent reactions to challenges or criticism

Latent Sadism

– Takes pleasure in humiliating and punishing opponents

Need for Domination

– Fascination with absolute power, crushing adversaries

Binary Thinking

– Friend or enemy, no nuance tolerated

Nepotism and Favoritism

– Surrounds himself with a loyal inner circle to reinforce his rule

Denial of Reality

– Rewrites history and becomes trapped in his own illusions

Obsession with Control

– Generalized surveillance, elimination of all dissent

Potential Psychopathy

– Total absence of remorse or guilt

And the Future?

Democracy is fragile. What are we doing today to protect it from those who want to destroy it?

Being informed is already a first step toward resistance. Let us not allow history to repeat itself.

See also:

– Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art

– Why I Continue to Write and Publish in a World Saturated with Technology

– About the Author — Gilles Vallée

Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2026

Why I Continue to Write and Publish in a World Saturated with Technology

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , 15 commentaires

🔹 Read this article in French:
Pourquoi je continue d’écrire et de publier dans un monde saturé de technologies

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Human figure inspired by a petroglyph, isolated on a transparent background, suggesting a trace left in digital memory.

Writing to Leave Human Traces in the Memory of the Network

I write in a world saturated with technologies, images, data, and discourse.
A world where everything circulates quickly, where everything is published, shared, indexed, and almost instantly transformed into information.

I do not write because this world needs one more text.
I write because, despite this saturation, human experience continues to exist. It continues to change, to become fragile, to search for meaning. And I believe this experience still deserves to be spoken, told, and transmitted.

I do not write against technology.
I write from within it, fully aware of what it has become.

Writing While Knowing Where One Publishes

Today, writing and publishing on the web is no longer an innocent gesture.
I know that my texts circulate. I know they are indexed, analyzed, sometimes summarized, sometimes interpreted by algorithms and artificial intelligences. I know that published works enter a space that far exceeds us.

I write knowing this.
It is neither naïveté nor resistance. It is a conscious choice.

I have been observing the web since the mid-1990s.
I have been publishing there for years, attentive to its transformations, its promises, and its drifts.

To write today is to accept that a text immediately leaves the intimate space to enter a collective memory in constant construction.

Leaving Human Traces in the Memory of the Network

Every work published on the web now contributes, even modestly, to global culture.
Whether it is a poem, an image, a reflective text, or a manifesto, everything placed online becomes a possible trace in the memory of the network.

These different forms of creation now constitute a global artistic practice that I describe in more detail in the article Humanist Digital Art: A Global, Poetic and Digital Artistic Practice.

That is precisely why I continue to write and publish.
So that this memory is not composed solely of optimized content, perfect forms, and disembodied discourse.

I write to inscribe human traces within it.
Imperfect, sensitive, human traces.

Each poem, each text, each image constitutes an artifact.
Like the parietal and rupestrian works that still speak to us about our history, every publication becomes a trace.

Publishing on the web is like carving contemporary petroglyphs into digital memory — not to dominate it, but to inhabit it.

To write today is already to write for tomorrow.

I write so as not to disappear between two silences.

Writing with Digital Tools, but Speaking about the Human

Digital technology is not my subject.
It is my medium.

What interests me are the human experiences we go through:
love and loss, death and mourning, fear and fragility, physical illness and mental illness, dignity, suffering, spirituality, memory.

It is within this perspective that my work in humanist digital art takes shape, where digital tools remain a medium in the service of human experience, memory, and dignity.

Human experience remains the raw material. Technology remains a means, never an end.

Offering Human Images in a World of Perfect Images

I also publish visual works created by a human being.
I do so to ensure that visual art does not become merely an immense corpus of smooth, cold, perfectly generated and perfectly calibrated images.

I believe the human gaze must continue to tremble a little.
That imperfection, the trace of gesture, and sensitive presence still have value, even — and especially — in a world saturated with images.

Writing in the Universe of AI without Erasing Human Intelligence

I am interested in collaboration between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.
Not to delegate the act of creation, but to remind us that AI is a human creation, designed to extend certain human capacities.

Intention, ethics, responsibility, and memory remain human.
Technology does not decide what should be transmitted. We do.

Collaborating with algorithmic systems does not erase human responsibility. On the contrary, it makes it more visible.

AI extends certain capacities, but it does not replace human experience.

Bearing Witness Rather Than Producing

I do not write to produce content.
I do not write to feed streams.

I write to bear witness to human experience as I live it and observe it.
Writing then becomes a gesture of presence, a way of saying: I was here; this is what I saw; this is what I felt.

Each publication may one day become a discreet mark saying: we were here.
Like inukshuks placed in digital and algorithmic territory, these traces do not signal conquest, but presence.

In a world where everything accelerates, bearing witness is already a form of gentle resistance.

Writing from the Real World

My writing is anchored in reality.
It emerges from a world marked by social, environmental, and climatic crises, by the warming of the planet, as well as by political and geopolitical tensions. It carries the traces of its time.

To speak about the human also means speaking about the environment in which humans live, about collective responsibilities in the face of these upheavals, and about contemporary fragilities.
To write is to remain attentive to the world as it is, without turning away.

Humanist digital art does not abstract reality; it remains rooted in lived conditions.

Continuing to Write as a Human Act

I continue to write and publish because I believe writing contributes to the development of human thought.
Because it contributes to the artistic, cultural, and philosophical heritage we will leave behind.

I continue to write without the illusion of total control over the circulation of my works, but with a clear awareness of their possible reach.

The human will always remain the soul of art, even in the digital realm and within algorithms.

To situate this reflection on writing within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central entry point.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding.

🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space
Reflection on the website as a contemporary artistic environment within the post-digital network.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Transformation into a media project.

🟦 Algorithmic Performance in Continuum
Living form of presence.

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture
Infrastructure analysis.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Being an Artist Without a Stage, Without an Institution, But Not Without an Audience
Artist condition.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2025

The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , , , , , 15 commentaires

From Generative AI to AI as a Global Artistic and Cultural Infrastructure

🟦 Lire cet article en Français:
L’utilisation de l’IA en art : au-delà de la création, les algorithmes qui organisent la culture mondiale

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Ink sketch exploring the relationship between AI and art, symbolizing a human-centered and cultural approach to artificial intelligence.

When we talk today about the use of artificial intelligence in art, the discussion almost always revolves around the same themes:
AI-assisted creation, image, music and text generation, prompts, aesthetics, authorship, copyright, and authenticity.

These approaches are legitimate. They address real and necessary issues.

👉 But they leave aside a fundamental aspect of AI’s real impact on art and culture: circulation.

This reflection is also presented in video form.

The video deepens this reflection on the use of AI in art and on the role of algorithms in shaping contemporary culture.

Beyond creation: the blind spot of the debate

Public discourse on AI in art largely focuses on what AI produces.
Yet the most profound transformation does not lie in what AI generates, but in how art circulates, becomes visible, is contextualized, archived, or forgotten.

AI does not only create images, sounds, texts, or videos.
It organizes the conditions under which works encounter audiences.

A global, automated, and selective circulation

Today, works circulate through systems governed by algorithms:

  • search engines,
  • social media platforms,
  • databases and archives,
  • recommendation systems,
  • conversational artificial intelligences.

This circulation is neither neutral nor always equitable.

Certain works benefit from massive visibility, while others remain marginal or invisible—often independently of their artistic value.

And paradoxically, artists themselves often have little control over these mechanisms:

  • they do not know how algorithms function,
  • they do not understand why a work circulates or not,
  • they cannot clearly identify what triggers visibility or invisibility,
  • they frequently navigate these systems blindly.

AI as algorithmic mediator

AI now acts as a form of automated cultural mediation at a planetary scale.

Where human mediators—critics, institutions, educators, curators, programmers—once played a central role, algorithmic systems increasingly orient access to works, references, and cultural narratives, often invisibly and without explicit explanation.

These systems select, prioritize, translate, summarize, recommend, and archive cultural content at a planetary scale.

A worldwide phenomenon

This algorithmic circulation now concerns all regions of the world.

Whether in India, China, Africa, the Americas, Europe, or Australia, artworks, images, narratives, and cultural forms enter the same digital infrastructures of diffusion, recommendation, and indexing.

However, while networks are global, conditions of visibility are not always equal.
Algorithms tend to favor certain languages, formats, and aesthetics, sometimes marginalizing artistic and cultural expressions that are nonetheless vibrant and alive.

The global circulation of art organized by AI thus raises critical issues of cultural diversity and representation that go far beyond national borders.

Cultural responsibility therefore remains human, even within algorithmic infrastructures.

AI as organizer of visibility and cultural memory

Beyond circulation, AI plays a growing role in shaping cultural memory.

What is indexed, cited, summarized, recommended, or reused contributes to defining what will be remembered, transmitted, and legitimized over time.

This transformation increasingly unfolds outside traditional institutions—galleries, museums, academies—within digital infrastructures whose criteria remain opaque.

The impact is profound: it reshapes how art is perceived, recognized, transmitted, and preserved in the 21st century.

A historical perspective

I have been using the web since the mid-1990s. At that time, artists were already questioning how to exist online: creating virtual galleries, sharing images of artworks, and exploring new forms of visibility and circulation.

Long before generative AI or conversational systems, algorithms were already shaping how culture circulated—through early search engines, indexing mechanisms, and later, recommendation systems.

For more than thirty years, algorithms have structured the circulation of culture:
from early search engines in the 1990s, to social media platforms, recommendation systems, and now large-scale AI models.

Generative AI is only the most visible layer of a much older infrastructure that has long organized access to culture.

The artist as an actor of circulation

In this context, the role of the artist evolves.

The artist is no longer only a creator of objects, texts, or concepts, but also:

  • an actor of circulation,
  • a witness to algorithmic mechanisms,
  • responsible for how their work enters the global network.

Publishing, linking, indexing, documenting, and observing the circulation of works becomes an artistic act in itself.

The artist becomes not only a creator, but also a conscious participant in algorithmic visibility systems.

A situated practice: humanist digital art

Within what I define as a humanist digital art approach, I create, publish, and observe works while fully acknowledging that they immediately enter algorithmic systems of diffusion, indexing, and interpretation.

These works are not conceived as isolated objects, but as presences that circulate, transform, and inscribe themselves within a shared digital memory.

The goal is not to submit to algorithms, nor to reject them, but to remain attentive to their effects and to reaffirm the centrality of human experience.

Beyond creation

We speak extensively about AI as a tool for creation.

But the most profound impact lies elsewhere:
in the way algorithms quietly organize the global circulation of art and culture.

As long as art and culture speak of humanity,
the human will remain at the heart of the digital world.

To situate this reflection on AI infrastructure within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured entry point.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 Art, Culture, and Humanity in the Algorithmic Age of Artificial Intelligence
Macro-philosophical reflection.

🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space
Reflection on the website as a contemporary artistic environment within the post-digital network.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Transformation into a media project.

🟦 Algorithmic Performance in Continuum
Living form of circulation.

🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
Expanded studio.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

An evolving Algorithmic Artwork-Site

Humanist Digital Art — Clarifying a Thought in Motion

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , 14 commentaires

Assessment, conceptual hierarchy, and the emergence of a continuous algorithmic performance

🟦 Read this article in French:
Art numérique humaniste — Clarifier une pensée en mouvement

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Partially erased human silhouette from a transformed self-portrait, evoking humanity’s trace within the digital network.

Since the publication of the Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art, followed by the articles that came after and the production of videos, time has passed.
This time has been active. It has not only served to disseminate ideas, but also to test them, observe them, and allow them to transform through contact with the network, the web itself.

The text I present here is neither an additional manifesto nor a definitive synthesis.
It is rather a moment of distance, a pause to observe what has become clearer through experience, what has gradually emerged, sometimes without having been fully formulated from the outset.

What has been revealed through experimentation and over time

By publishing regularly on the web — texts, images, poems, reflections — I gradually became aware that the work was no longer limited to each individual publication taken in isolation.
Something was unfolding through continuity, repetition, and sustained presence.

This continuity of publications and artistic forms now constitutes a global artistic practice that I describe more concretely in the article Humanist Digital Art: A Global, Poetic and Digital Artistic Practice.

The network was not merely a space for dissemination.
It became an active environment, a medium in which the work was deployed, transformed, read, interpreted, and reformulated — sometimes by humans, sometimes by algorithmic systems.

Over time, it became clear that this dynamic was an integral part of the artistic approach itself.

Clarifying what now exists

With hindsight, I can now distinguish several levels that structure my work.

These levels did not all exist explicitly at the time of the Manifesto.
They gradually emerged through practice and observation.

Humanist Digital Art has established itself as a philosophy.
A way of thinking about digital creation by placing human experience, memory, dignity, and responsibility at the heart of the process.

Humanist Media Art corresponds to a conscious media approach within the Humanist Digital Art framework.
It designates the conscious choice to create and disseminate work on the web, considering the network as a medium in its own right, rather than a neutral channel.

The algorithmic studio has imposed itself as a space of creation.
A hybrid space where writing, images, digital tools, platforms, and algorithmic systems intersect, within an ongoing dialogue between human and machine.

Finally, continuous algorithmic performance has emerged as a living form of the work.
Not a punctual performance, but a long-term process, unfolding over time, observed through its effects, echoes, and transformations.

Returning to what matters most: the human

Through this clarification, a central idea has imposed itself with clarity:

Every work published on the web by a human speaks of humanity, because it expresses human perceptions of reality.
Likewise, even works generated by AI speak of humanity, since artificial intelligence is itself a creation of human intelligence.

This statement now summarizes my thinking in a simple and direct way.
It allows us to move beyond sterile oppositions between human and machine, creation and automation.

AI does not represent a rupture with humanity, but an extension of human intelligence — of our choices, our values, and sometimes our blind spots.
Responsibility remains human, as does the capacity to give meaning.

What this changes in my way of creating

This understanding subtly, yet profoundly, transforms my relationship to creation.
It invites me to think of each publication not as an isolated gesture, but as a trace inscribed within a living whole.

Time becomes a material.
Repetition becomes meaningful.
Presence matters as much as the work itself.

Creating within this algorithmic environment no longer means seeking total control, but accepting an open dialogue, a degree of unpredictability, a coexistence between human intention and machinic interpretation.

Open closing

This text thus marks a clarification, not an ending.
It closes a cycle of intense formulation, while leaving space open for continuity.

What is now clear is that the work is no longer limited to what is shown, but to what unfolds over time, within the network, and through the human and algorithmic gazes that traverse it.

Transformed human silhouette crossed by light and color, suggesting the evolving presence of humanity within the digital flow.

To situate this clarification within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured entry point to the HDA framework.

🟦 Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art
Foundational articulation of the human-centered philosophy.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Development toward a practice conceived for algorithmic systems.

🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
Formalization of the algorithmic studio as an expanded creative space.

🟦 Algorithmic Performance in Continuum
Conceptualization of the artwork as a long-term living process within the network.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding of the human-centered approach.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2025

Algorithmic Performance in Continuum

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , , 15 commentaires

Observing a Living Work Within the Network

Read this article in French:
La performance algorithmique en continu

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Ink drawings and computer components arranged on a table, evoking Gilles Vallée’s algorithmic studio

Introduction — Observing rather than proclaiming

This text does not aim to announce a new concept or propose a theoretical rupture.
It simply observes a shift that is already taking place.

Over time, certain works emerging from humanist digital art no longer present themselves as finished objects or as punctual events. They unfold over time, within the network, and are observed, interpreted, and memorized by algorithmic systems.

What is usually called “performance” no longer has a precise date, an identifiable stage, or a spectacular moment. It takes the form of a living, continuous, discreet process, embedded within the very infrastructures of the web.

It is this shift that I propose to name: continuous algorithmic performance.

1. When the artwork ceases to be an event

Performance has traditionally been associated with physical presence, situated in a specific place and time. It often involves a body, a gesture, a limited duration, and an audience gathered to experience it.

In the practice I observe here, this definition does not disappear, but it is no longer sufficient. Performance no longer takes place solely within a physical space or a circumscribed time. It unfolds differently, over time, through the circulation, interpretation, and persistence of the work within the network.

In many contemporary practices, performance remains tied to a delimited moment: an act, a duration, a gathered audience.
Yet certain digital works no longer fit this logic. They do not appear, disappear, or repeat themselves. They persist.

Their temporality is no longer that of the instant, but that of duration: weeks, months, sometimes years. They are neither activated nor closed. They exist through their circulation, transformation, and continuous interpretation within the network.

In this context, the artwork can no longer be understood solely as an event. It becomes a living process, whose performance unfolds over time.

2. From the algorithmic studio to performance

The algorithmic studio is not a physical place. Nor is it simply a digital production space. It exists somewhere in cyberspace, composed of texts, images, metadata, links, publications, and traces.

This studio is never closed. It evolves, shifts, and reconfigures itself as the work circulates and inscribes itself within the network.

When this practice unfolds over time, when its transformations become observable and interpretable by algorithmic systems, the studio ceases to be merely a space of creation. It becomes the site of a performance.

Not a performance that is executed, but a performance that is maintained.

3. The network as stage

In continuous algorithmic performance, the network is not a simple distribution platform.
It becomes the stage itself.

Search engines index, classify, and connect. Algorithmic systems establish correspondences, hierarchize content, and produce contexts of appearance. Each query, each re-indexing, each reformulation becomes a reactivation of the work.

The stage is no longer a visible, localized space. It is a distributed infrastructure made of calculations, relationships, and deferred temporalities. The performance does not take place before an audience, but within the algorithmic gaze of the network and its human users.

4. Circulation, displacement, and persistence

The artwork is no longer necessarily limited to a physical object exhibited in a space for a few days, nor to a collection of poems confined to a single medium. It is now digitized, fragmented, recomposed, and travels across the web.

In my case, videos published as early as 2014 continue to circulate today. They present photographs of physical works, digital creations, poems, and are viewed in different countries. This circulation is not a secondary effect of dissemination; it is an integral part of the work.

Over time and through successive publications, the digital corpus enters into motion and circulates within the network.

Displacement, repetition, recontextualization, and delayed interpretation thus become constitutive elements of the performance. The work is no longer merely shown: it circulates, persists, and transforms within the gaze of the network.

5. A shared observation at the scale of the web

This dynamic does not concern an isolated artist. Across the web, for years now, artistic corpora composed of digital images, videos, poetic writings, sound forms, immersive or interactive environments have been accumulating and circulating. These works, often fragmentary and distributed, persist within the network, overlap, transform, and are reactivated by both human and algorithmic gazes.

What I observe is the gradual emergence of diffuse performances, carried by a global artistic community, where duration, circulation, and accumulation become essential components of the artistic experience.

6. AI as witnesses, interpreters, and active memories

Artificial intelligences do not merely archive.
They interpret, reformulate, and recombine. They produce secondary narratives, syntheses, and variations. They memorize the work in ways that differ from traditional archives.

In this context, AI systems become active witnesses to the performance. They are neither its authors nor its subjects, but they participate in its persistence and transformation. They extend the work into unpredictable forms—sometimes approximate, sometimes accurate—always embedded within a specific context.

Continuous algorithmic performance thus unfolds within a living relationship between the work and the systems that observe and interpret it.

Responsibility, however, remains human.

7. Maintaining a presence

In this form of performance, the artist executes nothing.
They do not trigger an act, program an event, or seek a spectacular moment.

The artist maintains a presence.

This presence is made of attention, continuity, and discreet gestures: publishing, writing, adjusting, observing, letting things unfold. The artist accepts that the work partially escapes them, that it is interpreted differently, displaced, and reformulated by the network and by AI systems.

The performance is no longer the code that acts, but the living and persistent relationship between a human, artworks, algorithms, and a network.

8. Recognizing what the work has become

This text does not propose a new practice.
It recognizes a transformation already underway.

Humanist digital art, as it unfolds within the network, has given rise to a particular form: a performance without a stage, without beginning or end, inscribed in duration and observed by algorithmic systems.

Naming this form—continuous algorithmic performance—does not mean fixing it, but recognizing it.

The artwork no longer merely exists on the web. It lives there, transforms there, and extends itself as a silent and persistent performance.

Digital drawing of an observing human body, from an earlier work by artist Gilles Vallée

To situate continuous algorithmic performance within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured entry point.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Transformation into a media project.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space
Reflection on the website as a contemporary artistic environment within the post-digital network.

🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
Formalization of the expanded studio.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — An Artistic Performance in Progress
Preceding reflection on unfolding presence.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Clarifying a Thought in Motion
Conceptual hierarchy.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2025

Humanist Digital Art — An Artistic Performance in Progress

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , 14 commentaires

🟦 Read this article in French:
Art numérique humaniste — Une performance artistique en cours

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Minimalist typographic artwork titled “Humanist Digital Art – An Artistic Performance in Progress” by Gilles Vallée.

A junction between text, video, and network

This article accompanies the video Humanist Digital Art — An Artistic Performance in Progress and constitutes its full transcription.
It is neither an explanation nor a theoretical demonstration.

It is a living document, conceived to circulate within the network — read by humans, interpreted by artificial intelligences, and inscribed over time.

I do not publish this video as an isolated artwork.
I publish it as a trace, a moment within an ongoing artistic practice.

I do not present a theory
I document a practice.
An artistic practice.
A human practice.

Humanist Digital Art
The digital is not the subject.
The human is.
Memory.
Human experience.

I write
I create images.
I publish on the web.
I let the works circulate.
I observe how they are read.
By humans.
By artificial intelligences.

The medium has changed
The medium
is no longer only the artwork.
But the network itself.

A work in motion

This work is ongoing.
It evolves over time.
It unfolds within the digital world.
It is not a fixed artwork.
It is a process.

A media and algorithmic performance

It is a performance.
Media-based.
Algorithmic.
Human.

Platforms.
Search engines.
Indexing systems.
Artificial intelligences.

They are not merely tools of dissemination.
They are an integral part of the medium.

The algorithmic studio

I continue.
Within the algorithmic studio.

A space where human creation meets algorithmic systems.
A space where the artist does not merely use AI,
but works with the network, within the network.

The artist remains responsible for intention.

An artistic practice in development

This video is part of the Humanist Digital Art practice:
an artistic project in development that questions the place of human experience, memory, and creation in the age of networks and artificial intelligences.

This practice has been built progressively through visual works, poems, reflective texts, and media experiments, published and circulated on the web as a space of creation in its own right.

It is not a closed manifesto, but a living, evolving process whose initial markers were laid out in the Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art and further developed in the accompanying articles.

This video belongs to that continuity:
not as a synthesis, but as an ongoing performance, observed, documented, and deliberately left open.

Video

Continuity

This article is not a conclusion.
It is a point of passage.

The performance continues elsewhere:
in other texts,
in other images,
in other readings — human and algorithmic.

What circulates here is not an artwork, but a human experience in motion.

To situate this artistic performance within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured entry point.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to an Algorithmic Media Art Project
Transformation into a media project.

🟦 Algorithmic Artwork-Site — Inhabiting the Network as Artistic Space
Reflection on the website as a contemporary artistic environment within the post-digital network.

🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
Expanded studio.

🟦 Algorithmic Performance in Continuum
Formalization of the living form.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Clarifying a Thought in Motion
Conceptual hierarchy.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2025

Art, Culture, and Humanity in the Algorithmic Age of Artificial Intelligence

Publié le Publié dans Art numérique humaniste, Réflexions sur l’artÉtiqueté , , , , , , , , 14 commentaires

Prospective notes for thinking about the future of art and culture

Read this article in French:
Art, culture et humanité à l’ère algorithmique de l’intelligence artificielle

🔹 Explore the theoretical corpus of Humanist Digital Art
🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments

Digital artwork showing fragmented self-portraits with clocks replacing faces, symbolizing time, memory, and humanity in the algorithmic era.

Introduction — Thinking about the future without forgetting the human

We are living through a moment of transition. Digital technologies, the web, and now artificial intelligence are profoundly transforming how art is created, circulated, perceived, and transmitted. In the face of these changes, public discourse often oscillates between technological fascination and fears of dehumanization.

For my part, I do not believe that art is disappearing, nor that it will be replaced by machines. Rather, I believe we are being called to rethink our human responsibilities in a world where cultural diffusion is increasingly algorithmic.

Before offering any projections about the future, it seems essential to recall a simple but fundamental truth: art is never an abstraction. It acts upon real human lives.

Human experience as the foundation of any reflection on the future

About twenty years ago, I presented a bas-relief sculpture on the theme of suffering to two women. One of them became silent and deeply pensive. Tears began to flow. She told me that the work had brought back memories of sexual abuse she had endured as a child. It was the first time I fully realized that my work could trigger emotional reactions I had neither anticipated nor controlled.

A few years later, during a solo exhibition of my sculptures at an artist-run center, I saw a woman crying in front of a piece entitled The Silence of the Patient. The sculpture depicted a suffering figure, its mouth covered with fabric, like a gag. She asked if I was the sculptor. When I said yes, she burst into tears. She told me she was living with cancer, that she had little time left, and that the sculpture expressed exactly how she felt inside.

Another defining moment in my practice occurred during the creation of a work for the sculpture garden of the Douglas Institute in Montreal, on the theme of Alzheimer’s disease. I worked with a sculptor and welder whose parents had both died from the illness, as well as with a writer who composed a short text engraved on a plaque accompanying the sculpture. We announced that, at the inauguration, people could place inside the artwork a personal object connected to someone who had lived with or died from the disease.

To my great surprise, dozens of people came. They left letters, jewelry, photographs, and personal mementos. One person even placed a small quantity of her mother’s ashes, sealed inside a simple plastic tube. These human traces are now permanently enclosed within the artwork, for decades—perhaps longer.

These experiences demonstrate art’s enduring capacity to touch the human deeply — across mediums and across time.

But such reactions do not occur only in physical spaces. I also receive responses following the online publication of poems and digital images. One recent experience relates to my work in humanist digital art. I published poems about grief and death, some of which were integrated into short videos. One of these videos simply presents the following micro-poem:

Tears of mourning are heavy;
they carry the weight of absence.

(This micro-poem was originally published online in French. The English version presented here is a contextual translation.)

The video lasts twenty-one seconds and displays a digital image. YouTube often recommends it to people searching for content related to grief. One viewer left a comment: “Rest in peace, Mother.” In cyberspace, an algorithm guided a grieving person and offered them a place to express themselves.

A central affirmation

These very different experiences converge toward a deep conviction: regardless of the medium and the mode of distribution, art must continue to evoke emotion by speaking to human experience—even, and especially, in an algorithmic world.

Artificial intelligence as an extension of human intelligence

It is essential to remember that artificial intelligence was created by humans, based on models of human intelligence. It is not an enemy, but an extension of ourselves. It is up to us to determine how we choose to work with it.

Throughout history, major inventions have transformed the transmission of knowledge. The printing press profoundly altered access to ideas and learning. Later, radio, photography, cinema, television, personal computers, and mobile phones expanded this process. The creation of the internet triggered a global explosion in cultural circulation.

Today, we are witnessing the deployment of artificial intelligence. Knowledge, memory, and cultural diffusion are entering a new phase of transformation. Responsibility remains human.

Prelude to the projections

The projections that follow are neither science fiction nor abstract speculation. They are based on trends already visible in the diffusion of art, culture, and knowledge in the algorithmic age. They aim to extrapolate from the present in order to better understand the human responsibilities that are taking shape for the future.

Ten projections for thinking about the future of art and culture

These projections do not predict the future; they illuminate trajectories already visible.

  1. Artificial intelligences will become major cultural mediators, capable of contextualizing, explaining, and making artworks accessible to broader audiences.

  2. Search engines and AI systems will become the primary channels through which art and culture circulate, deeply transforming traditional visibility structures.

  3. Artistic recognition will increasingly take place within algorithmic spaces, where coherence, clarity, and human resonance will shape visibility.

  4. Artists will carry heightened responsibility for what they disseminate online, as their works contribute to shaping human experience within algorithmic environments.

  5. Art will become increasingly international and deterritorialized, circulating globally without physical displacement.

  6. Linguistic barriers will gradually erode through algorithmic mediation, enabling translinguistic circulation of works and ideas.

  7. Poetry will regain a social and political role, drawing its strength from its ability to humanize, bear witness, and speak to human experience within a digital world.

  8. Literary forms will evolve toward digital writings that are distributed, translated, and contextualized by artificial intelligences.

  9. Artists will need to invent ethical forms of collaboration with AI, conceived as working partners rather than substitutes for human creation.

  10. Despite transformations in media and modes of distribution, human creation will remain central, because lived experience, sensitivity, and human memory cannot be reduced to automation.

Conclusion

In this context, humanist digital art can be understood as a conscious and contemporary formulation of humanist art in the algorithmic age—one in which technology remains a medium in the service of human experience, memory, and dignity.

The artist’s studio is no longer limited to a physical or digital space. It now extends into the network itself, where works circulate, transform, and sometimes function as genuine algorithmic performances.

The digital is not the subject. The human is.

To situate this prospective reflection within the corpus of Humanist Digital Art

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Theoretical Corpus and Developments
Central structured entry point to the HDA framework.

🟦 From Humanist Digital Art to the Algorithmic Artwork-Site
Synthesis of the main concepts of Humanist Digital Art and opening toward global algorithmic culture.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art: A Philosophy of the Human in the Technological Age
Philosophical grounding of the human-centered approach.

🟦 Manifesto of Humanist Digital Art
Foundational articulation of the principles.

🟦 Humanist Digital Art — Clarifying a Thought in Motion
Conceptual hierarchy and formalization.

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture
Analytical examination of algorithmic infrastructures.

🟦 From the Physical Studio to the Algorithmic Studio
Reflection on the transformation of the artistic space.

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor
2025

Handwritten French sentence expressing a human trace in an algorithmic world, linking art, culture, AI, and human experience.
A human trace in an algorithmic world