| Abstract [eng] |
The final thesis aims at describing and analysing the concept of generative media developed in Lev Manovich's theory and at determining whether contemporary artificial intelligence generativity continues avant-garde artistic practices or represents a fundamental cultural rupture. The study addresses five interrelated objectives: first, theoretical models of generative media are analysed, revealing that the concept of generativity encompasses three distinct phenomena – generative art, generative media, and generative culture industry, each maintaining a different relationship with the creative process, the question of authorship, and cultural function; second, the avant-garde roots of generativity are examined through a genealogical perspective, demonstrating how surrealist automatism, OuLiPo combinatorics, Fluxus instruction art, and aleatoric music established principles – randomness, rule, procedure, and the withdrawal of the author from the process – that structurally correspond to the operational logic of contemporary generative artificial intelligence; third, Manovich's theoretical model, grounded in the concepts of artificial Platonism, cultural memory recombination, and separation and selection, is analysed and its structural limitation is revealed – the descriptive position presents conformist aesthetics as an inevitable systemic fact rather than as a cultural problem, thus functioning not only as an analytical tool but also as a legitimation mechanism; fourth, the role of the culture industry in restructuring generativity is critically evaluated, identifying three interrelated transformation mechanisms – the inversion of political purpose, whereby subversive avant-garde tools become instruments of corporate efficiency, the centralization of technological control, whereby generative systems require massive infrastructural resources monopolized by a few large technology corporations, and aesthetic conformism, whereby artificial Platonism operating in latent space structurally rejects formal extremes, political radicalism, and unpopular cultural forms; fifth, the study investigates how generative media restructure the concept of authorship, criteria of authenticity, and the value of cultural objects. The research employs systematic and critical examination of scholarly literature, genealogical method, critical discourse analysis, comparative analysis, and problem-analytical synthesis. The results of the study reveal that generativity is not a homogeneous principle – it can signify both critical experimental practice and standardized mass production mechanism, and this distinction is essential for further analysis. Genealogical analysis demonstrates a fundamental difference between avant-garde and contemporary generativity: in the avant-garde, randomness, procedure, and authorial withdrawal constituted a deliberate critical position against bourgeois art autonomy and the culture industry rather than a neutral technical means, whereas contemporary generativity has appropriated the formal principles of the avant-garde while separating them from their critical content. The analysis of Manovich's theory reveals that his descriptive project provides a precise analytical apparatus for describing generative culture, yet it possesses a structural limitation – conformist aesthetics is presented as an inevitable fact rather than as a cultural problem, thus the theory operates as a legitimation mechanism, providing academic foundation for the logic of culture industry standardization in a new technical form. The analysis of culture industry transformation demonstrates that generativity is transformed from critical practice into a standardized production system through three mechanisms: inversion of critique, centralization of technological control, and aesthetic conformism, whereby latent space structurally optimizes production for mass consumption. The investigation of authorship, authenticity, and the status of cultural objects reveals a structural paradox: the withdrawal of the creator from the process here is not a critical gesture, as in the avant-garde, but a technological given without critical dimension, and generative systems produce pseudo-authenticity through a statistical familiarity effect rather than through historical uniqueness. The thesis argues that the status of generative culture objects cannot be unequivocally defined either as art or as traditional kitsch – they constitute a new cultural form for which the development of an adequate analytical apparatus remains an open question of theoretical agenda. The study maintains that contemporary generative artificial intelligence represents not a continuation of avant-garde traditions but their structural appropriation – whereby the same formal principles are implemented for the purposes of culture industry logic, and Manovich's descriptive theory legitimates this process by presenting conformist aesthetics as an inevitable cultural logic. |
