Creativity Under Algorithmic Opacity
Generative AI is rapidly transforming how creativity is produced, valued, and understood in contemporary society. While these technologies expand access to creative tools and increase efficiency, they also risk shifting creativity from a lived human experience to an optimized process governed by opaque algorithmic systems. As expression and decision-making become filtered through technologies that are not fully transparent, questions of power, responsibility, visibility, and human agency become increasingly urgent. Creativity Under Algorithmic Opacity is an artistic research project that investigates how generative AI reshapes creativity as a human value rather than merely an instrumental resource. The project explores tensions between efficiency and intentionality, automation and meaning-making, and examines how algorithmic opacity affects autonomy, authorship, and participation within cultural and institutional contexts.
Through live performance, AI-driven text and voice generation, generative scenography, and algorithmic dramaturgy, the project stages encounters between human performers and machine decision systems. By integrating artistic research with social science perspectives, the project seeks to represent algorithmic infrastructures visible and negotiable within a public performative space.
The project aims to develop new artistic and analytical methods for understanding creativity in the age of AI and to contribute to broader public discourse on what is at stake when human creative practices increasingly coexist with autonomous and opaque technological systems.
Participants in the project
Sofie Volquartz Lebech is a researcher and performance artist working in the fields between theory and performance. Her artistic practice examines affect, autobiographical writing and bodily precarity. She holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen focused on the politics of response in performance. She is associate professor at Malmö Theater Academy, Lund University.
Miranda Kajtazi is an Associate Professor (Docent) in Information Systems at Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM), specializing in cybersecurity, data privacy, digital ethics, and digital inequalities. She has published widely in these areas, with work appearing in Information & Computer Security, the Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, and Transactions on Replication Research, among others. She currently leads the NEXUS seminar series at LUSEM and is a founding member of the Inclusive Futures Initiative. Miranda also serves on the board of the School of Management and IT (Swedish MIT). She has recently been a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and the University of Sussex. She additionally leads the launch of the first curated exhibition for the International Conference on Information Systems to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, December 2026.
Erik Pold holds a BFA from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (1994-98), and a post-graduate degree in artistic and cultural leadership from Sydsjællands Universitetscenter/Odsherred Teatercenter (2009 – 2011). In his work Erik is engaged in exploring new areas of the performing arts, mixing different genres and artistic strategies in order to challenge contemporary theatre.