Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence: online event, 12 Sept

GH
Gary Hall
Wed, Sep 3, 2025 11:26 AM

Dear All,

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce details of an upcoming
online symposium based around a discussion of my new book, /Masked
Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative
Intelligence
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/
/(London: Open Humanities Press, 2025; open access).

Friday 12th of September, 2025
9:30 – 11:30 am Mexico City
11.30-13.30 Ann Arbour
16.30-18.30 London
via Zoom

With:
Peter Baker (University of Stirling)
Alexandra Anikina (University of Southampton)
Gareth Williams (University of Michigan)
Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes (17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos)
Gabriela Méndez-Cota (Culture Machine/Universidad Iberoamericana)

Co-organised by the electronic journal Culture Machine
https://culturemachine.net/ and 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos
https://diecisiete.org/masked-media/ in Mexico City, the event is
hosted by the Laboratory of Contemporary Writings / Laboratorio de
Escrituras Contemporáneas, which is being launched with this event. The
idea for the Laboratory of Contemporary Writings emerged from a recent
ACLA Seminar titled ‘Displacing Academic Practices in the Ruins of the
Neoliberal University’. While linked to conversations around
infrapolitics
https://culturemachine.net/vol-22-anthropocene-infrapolitics/, its
focus is broader: on writing, subjectivity, students, ourselves, and on
how to respond to the conditions we’re living through today.

To join this event online, email: enlace@17edu.org


On Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial
Creative Intelligence
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/ [open
access]

If we want a more socially and environmentally just future, do we need a
radical new theory of change – or to radically change theory? It’s this
question that Gary Hall and his collaborators have been addressing for
over twenty years with experimental publishing projects such as Open
Humanities Press, Liquid and Living Books, Radical Open Access
Collective, and the Culture-led Re-Commoning of Cities. Unsettling
received ideas of the author and book, originality and copyright, real
and artificial intelligence, these uncommon communities of
theorist-mediums have been testing some of the ‘non-modernist-liberal’
modes of creating and sharing knowledge that are enabled by various
media technologies, from writing and print through photography and video
to computers and GenAI. By thinking outside the masked black box that
renders the anthropocentric, Euro-Western knowledge-making practices of
the arts and humanities invisible – ensuring the human is kept
ontologically separate from the nonhuman, be it animals, the planet or
algorithmic machines – they show there’s no such thing as the human, the
nonhuman already being in(the)human.

/Masked Media /is one such experimental project. It is not a
'human-authored' work. Instead, the thinking within it has been
generated by a radically relational inhuman assemblage that includes AI
and more. Although the book appears under a real name –  ‘Gary Hall’ –
which, like Banksy and Karen Eliot, acts as a mask, it is not the
intellectual property of a singular human individual, and is published
under a Collective Conditions for Re-Use licence to reflect this. Masked
Media demonstrates how such norm-critical experimentation is of vital
importance to our understanding of everything from identity politics and
the decolonisation of knowledge, through epistemologies of the Global
South and the possibilities of open city infrastructure, to extractive
capitalism, planetary destruction and the Anthropocene.

--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/

Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Websitehttp://www.garyhall.info
Blog:http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/

Latest:

Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/

Blog post: 'The Commons vs Creative Commons III: Some Problems, Distinctions and Alternatives - Including Signals, CC's Response to AI':http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/9/1/the-commons-vs-creative-commons-iii-some-problems-distinctio.html

Dear All, Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce details of an upcoming online symposium based around a discussion of my new book, /Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence <http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/> /(London: Open Humanities Press, 2025; open access). Friday 12th of September, 2025 9:30 – 11:30 am Mexico City 11.30-13.30 Ann Arbour 16.30-18.30 London via Zoom With: Peter Baker (University of Stirling) Alexandra Anikina (University of Southampton) Gareth Williams (University of Michigan) Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes (17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos) Gabriela Méndez-Cota (Culture Machine/Universidad Iberoamericana) Co-organised by the electronic journal Culture Machine <https://culturemachine.net/> and 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos <https://diecisiete.org/masked-media/> in Mexico City, the event is hosted by the Laboratory of Contemporary Writings / Laboratorio de Escrituras Contemporáneas, which is being launched with this event. The idea for the Laboratory of Contemporary Writings emerged from a recent ACLA Seminar titled ‘Displacing Academic Practices in the Ruins of the Neoliberal University’. While linked to conversations around infrapolitics <https://culturemachine.net/vol-22-anthropocene-infrapolitics/>, its focus is broader: on writing, subjectivity, students, ourselves, and on how to respond to the conditions we’re living through today. To join this event online, email: enlace@17edu.org --- On Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence <http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/> [open access] If we want a more socially and environmentally just future, do we need a radical new theory of change – or to radically change theory? It’s this question that Gary Hall and his collaborators have been addressing for over twenty years with experimental publishing projects such as Open Humanities Press, Liquid and Living Books, Radical Open Access Collective, and the Culture-led Re-Commoning of Cities. Unsettling received ideas of the author and book, originality and copyright, real and artificial intelligence, these uncommon communities of theorist-mediums have been testing some of the ‘non-modernist-liberal’ modes of creating and sharing knowledge that are enabled by various media technologies, from writing and print through photography and video to computers and GenAI. By thinking outside the masked black box that renders the anthropocentric, Euro-Western knowledge-making practices of the arts and humanities invisible – ensuring the human is kept ontologically separate from the nonhuman, be it animals, the planet or algorithmic machines – they show there’s no such thing as the human, the nonhuman already being in(the)human. /Masked Media /is one such experimental project. It is not a 'human-authored' work. Instead, the thinking within it has been generated by a radically relational inhuman assemblage that includes AI and more. Although the book appears under a real name –  ‘Gary Hall’ – which, like Banksy and Karen Eliot, acts as a mask, it is not the intellectual property of a singular human individual, and is published under a Collective Conditions for Re-Use licence to reflect this. Masked Media demonstrates how such norm-critical experimentation is of vital importance to our understanding of everything from identity politics and the decolonisation of knowledge, through epistemologies of the Global South and the possibilities of open city infrastructure, to extractive capitalism, planetary destruction and the Anthropocene. -- Gary Hall Professor of Media Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University: https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/ Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org Websitehttp://www.garyhall.info Blog:http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/ Latest: Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/ Blog post: 'The Commons vs Creative Commons III: Some Problems, Distinctions and Alternatives - Including Signals, CC's Response to AI':http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/9/1/the-commons-vs-creative-commons-iii-some-problems-distinctio.html