Hi, I'm Emilie. Welcome to my research repository. My work explores the intersection of technology and visual culture. Feel free to browse and reach out with any questions or ideas for collaborations.
I'm a PhD researcher at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. In addition to my thesis I'm co-editeding a book called Decentering Ethics with AI Art and run the research group CODED AESTHETICS with my colleague Dr. Jasmin Pfefferkorn.
Our everyday activities are increasingly co-produced by machine learning (ML), as the computational enters areas of creative production, urban spaces, and cultural institutions. We explore and provide insights into how the digital is operationalized – in text to image AI, in computational photography, in natural language processing, biometric surveillance, among other processes.
The generative potential of code is taking new forms. This has positioned us within a paradigmatic shift, which asks us to navigate new ways of seeing and making sense of sense-making. Our research is guided by two core questions:
How are aesthetic processes – sense-making and world-building – emerging in the computational era?
What interventions and insights can critical humanities scholars offer in exploring and contextualising these processes?
CODED AESTHETICS aims to encourage transdisciplinary forms of knowledge sharing and production. There is a distinct two-way delay between the knowledge produced in the field of computer science (CS) and HASS disciplines.
Editorial team: Vanessa Bartlett, Jasmin Pfefferkorn, Emilie K Sunde (University of Melbourne)
This book argues that artists and cultural institutions are a vital force in the construction of a relational, collectively held ethics of human-machine assemblages. Technological change always out-paces ethical governance, producing an uncertain zone between what machines can do, and what is upheld as ethical by diverse publics. Working quickly and often provocatively, artists trace ethical tensions as they are emerging in public consciousness, providing a vital speculative approach to AI futures.