Dr. Charlotte Kent Receives Prestigious NEH Award

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Announced $26.2 Million for 238 Humanities Projects Nationwide with Montclair State University being granted $74,999 for ‘Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities (Individuals)’ with Professor Dr. Charlotte Kent named as the Project Director.

The Project Title: ‘Arts, Agency, and Automation: A Global Cultural Affair’ will conduct multidisciplinary research and field interviews with globally recognized artists to produce academic articles and prepare a book manuscript exploring the concept of agency in generative AI artistic production.

Artificial intelligence machines have global implications, involving multiple governments and regulatory issues. They not only impact art history and museums but also serve as significant visual references in an ongoing international dialogue. “Arts, Agency and Automation: A Global Cultural Affair” explores agency across various disciplines and includes interviews with artists from diverse backgrounds on their perceptions of agency while using large model generators.

Defining agency often involves disciplinary constructs and assumptions. It typically refers to the ability to make things happen, combining autonomy and the resources to enact choices. Concerns about autonomous machines and artificial general intelligence have intensified discussions on agency, especially in art where new AI systems like Chat-GPT and Dall-E are prominent.

Spearheaded by Professor Dr. Charlotte Kent, this initiative promises a deep dive into the nuanced intersections of technology and humanity. With Kent at the helm, the project is poised to shed light on both the risks and rewards inherent in our rapidly evolving digital landscape, offering invaluable insights for scholars, practitioners, and the broader community alike.

Also, on April 10, 2024, Dr. Charlotte Kent participated as a speaker in a discussion hosted by the Italian Section of the Modern Languages and Literature Department at Johns Hopkins University. She was joined by Kat Mustatea, author of Voidoplis, for which Kent provided the foreword.

Voidopolis was released in 2023 by MIT Press Leonardo Series / Penguin Random House as an augmented reality book. The project has previously won the Arts and Letters ‘Unclassifiable’ Prize for literature and the Dante 700th Prize for art, has been shown internationally in a variety of digital and physical formats, and premiered as an AR book at Ars Electronica 2021.

Not only that, Dr. Kent penned “Extreme Capitalism: The Absurd Performance of Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc,” focusing on the artistic project centered on data collection and tracking.

Finally, Dr. Kent contributed an article to the Brooklyn Rail discussing “Art, Media, and Two Centuries of Avant-Garde Efforts.”