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Amanda Wasielewski

@amandawasielewski.com

1.5K followers 500 following 190 posts

Art/media/urban histories | DH & AI New book: Digital Photography after AI (2026) Other recent books: Computational Formalism: Art History & Machine Learning (2023), Critical Digital Art History (2024)

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Apr 7

Guys not everything is AI.

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 14d

Likewise! 😃 it’s nice to see it in print!

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 14d

My contribution with Matti La Mela (@matti-lamela.bsky.social) — ”What is Digital Humanities and what’s it doing in the department of ALM (Archives, Libraries, and Museums)”

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 14d

Soon to be released (Oct 9): this gorgeous pink anthology

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Reposted by Amanda Wasielewski

Nataliia Laba @nataliialaba.com · 16d

New study in Memory, Mind & Media: "Memory of the multitude and representation in AI-generated #images of #war;
#AI and #Memory special collection. doi.org/10.1017/mem....

#criticalAI @universitypress.cambridge.org

Memory of the multitude and representation in AI-generated
images of war

Abstract
This study addresses how AI-generated images of war are changing the making of memory. Instead of
asking how AI-generated images affect individual recall, we focus on how they communicate specific
representations, recognising that such portrayals can cultivate particular assumptions and beliefs.
Drawing on memory of the multitude, visual social semiotics, and cultivation/desensitisation theories,
we analyse how visual generative AI mediates the representation of the Russia-Ukraine war. Our
corpus includes 200 images of the Russia-Ukraine war generated from 23 prompts across proprietary
and open-source visual generative AI systems. The findings indicate that visual generative AI tends to
present a sanitised view of the war. Critical aspects, such as death, injury, and suffering of children and
refugees are often excluded. Furthermore, a disproportional focus on urban areas misrepresents the
full scope of the war. Visual generative AI, we argue, introduces a new dimension to memory making in
that it blends documentation with speculative fiction by synthesising the multitude embedded within
the visual memory of war archives, historical biases, representational limitations, and commercial risk
aversion. By foregrounding the socio-technical and discursive dimensions of synthetic war content,
this study contributes to an interdisciplinary dialogue on collective memory at the intersection of
visual communication studies, media studies, and memory studies by providing empirical insights into
how generative AI mediates the visual representation of war through human-archival-mechanistic
entanglements.
Keywords: visual generative AI; AI-generated images; memory of the multitude; war representation

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 16d

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 16d

ohhh kay. I see how it is.

asking chatgpt if i can generate a photo of someone frustrated with a computer and breaking it. It says it cannot generate violent imagery

chatgpt can you generate a photo of someone breaking a pencil. Shows a photo of someone breaking something over half a laptop

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Reposted by Amanda Wasielewski

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 27d

Q. Who aligns the aligners?
A. alignmentalignment.ai

Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

alignmentalignment.ai

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Sep 8

We have gotten into old school (non-digital) radio listening in our house and I had no idea AM has been effectively phased out. Our radio didn’t even come with AM functionality

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Sep 5

DECENTRING ETHICS: AI ART AS METHOD is now out -- and it is free to download!
My contribution is titled: "The Role of Artists in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"

Check it out: www.data-browser.net/db09.html

DATA Browser - DB 09 Decentring Ethics

www.data-browser.net

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 21

lol

michael veale @michae.lv · Aug 12

In a new digital twist to environmental individualisation of responsibility, the UK government is now advising people to “[d]elete old emails and pictures” in data centres to help with the current drought. www.gov.uk/government/n...

HOW TO SAVE WATER AT HOME
Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.

Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.

Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.

Avoid watering your lawn – brown grass will grow back healthy.

Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.

Take shorter showers.

Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 20

🫠

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · Aug 20

MIT’s NANDA initiative found that 95% of generative AI deployments fail after interviewing 150 execs, surveying 350 workers, and analyzing 300 projects. The real “productivity gains” seem to come from layoffs and squeezing more work from fewer people not AI.

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

There’s a stark difference in success rates between companies that purchase AI tools from vendors and those that build them internally.

fortune.com

Reposted by Amanda Wasielewski

Stef North-Sagrott @archaeostef.bsky.social · Aug 19

One for @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social - I was reading this morning about the Asda 'Price Promise' stones that were erected across the country in the 90s

loststonesofasda.wordpress.com

Some are definitely on the way to being archaeological monuments, such as this one in Trumfleet, South Yorkshire

A stone that looks like a prehistoric standing stone but inscribed with "Asda Price Promise Permanently [text obscured] prices [text obscured].

The stone is by a Drystone wall and vegetation grows around it

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 15

Also there's a shout out to cliometrics in 1988 -- so you know, DH is not left out of the equation even then.

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 15

That being said, the report reads as a lot more knowledgable and sympathetic than anything written today criticizing the humanities. So, things do seem worse discourse-wise.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 15

"The key questions are thought to be about gender, race, and class. What groups did the authors of these works represent? How did their books enhance the social power of those groups over others?" [p.11-12]

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 15

"Viewing humanities texts as though they were primarily political
documents is the most noticeable trend in academic study of the humanities today. Truth and beauty and excellence are regarded as irrelevant; questions of intellectual and aesthetic quality, dismissed." [...]

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 15

Given that the value of humanities is once again in the debate cycle. Here's a report by none-other-than Lynne Cheney on the state of the humanities in 1988. The same complaints as there ever were: humanities scholarship is too esoteric (to be relevant) and too political.

eric.ed.gov?id=ED303408

ERIC - ED303408 - Humanities in America. A Report to the President, the Congress, and the American People., 1988-Sep

In 1985 Congress instructed the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to report every two years on the state of humanities throughout the United States. This report is the first to be issued. Al...

eric.ed.gov

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Aug 14

Our preprint is up for this collaborative article, written to address the effects of generative AI on the digital commons. Check it out:

arxiv.org/abs/2508.06470

Generative AI and the Future of the Digital Commons: Five Open Questions and Knowledge Gaps

The rapid advancement of Generative AI (GenAI) relies heavily on the digital commons, a vast collection of free and open online content that is created, shared, and maintained by communities. However,...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Amanda Wasielewski

Joman @joman.bsky.social · Aug 13

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Jul 15

Job alert: My department is looking for a new PhD student in Information Studies, AI and Digital Humanities research!

uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

PhD student in Information Studies, AI and Digital Humanities research

PhD student in Information Studies with a direction towards AI and Digital Humanities research At the Department of ALM (Archival Studies, Library and Information Studies, Museum and Cultural Herita

uu.varbi.com

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Jul 15

📣CFP 📣
Beyond the Theory-Practice Divide: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Methods for Research and Scholarship in Art and Art History

Co-hosting this panel at CAA next February as part of the Committee on Research and Scholarship:
caa.confex.com/caa/2026/web...

Session: Beyond the Theory-Practice Divide: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Methods for Research and Scholarship in Art and Art History (CAA 114th Annual Conference)Preliminary Program

caa.confex.com

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Reposted by Amanda Wasielewski

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · Jul 14

paradox, you say

Research reveals a paradox: the more people understand AI, the more hesitant they may become to embrace it.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Jul 13

I’ve been reading a bunch of popular nonfiction lately and it can often be simplistic and full of unsubstantiated platitudes/reads as rushed out and shallow. This book somehow managed to be up to the minute but also thorough, considered and well researched 😍

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · Jul 13

Just finished reading Karen Hao’s Empire of AI — and wow so good!

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