How to approach the Greek notion of technē in the digital era? What are various means to make the reception of technē expressive, accessible, and durable? To what extent does the paradox of science intersect with the practice of fine art? How do artists position themselves in the process of making? How does AI shape the writing system, and the production of epigraphy? What will be the future of fine art? Following these questions at present, this seminar situates arts, epigraphy and performance in dialogue with sense, haptics, media, and digital aesthetics.

Among sense, the haptic sense is the most elusive one, which is hard to describe in language, but always multi-sensory. Some culturally-attuned modernist theorists like Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) observed new sensational experiences and the haptic transformation in the early twentieth century. In recent years, film theorists, sociologists, physiologist, computer scientists and geographers have attempted to describe the sense of touch. How does a haptic experience choreograph the feeling between the self and other? Does the haptic always carry an implication of the erotic? How does a text evoke haptic responses from readers? To what extent is the haptic objectified as sensory data? 

This seminar is looking for papers that develop analysis on AI and higher education, classical reception in the modern and contemporary period, and that crosses the boundaries of comparative literature and media studies, human geography, as well as art and architecture. The seminar encourages the discussion of the ethical concern of Generative AI —how to balance the privacy, fairness and safety in AI projects. Considering Greek art collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum at University of Cambridge, British Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this seminar joins the dialogue with new practices within museums. In this regard, the seminar seeks paper structure AI effectively for the digitalisation of Greek epigraphy, cloud storage systems of Greek vases, and curatorial management of museum databases.