16/10/2026
📢 The Call for Papers for the transdisciplinary conference “Talos at the Shores of Crete: Imagining Artificial Beings from Antiquity to the Present” within the framework of the project “The Art of AI. Rethinking Notions of Creativity, Aesthetics and Ethics”. The transdisciplinary conference will take place in Florence from 25–26 February 2027.
💡 From ancient mythology and medieval automata to modern robotics and contemporary AI, artificial beings have occupied a central place in cultural imagination and philosophical thinking. Machines have often been imagined before they were built and their material and conceptual development has also continually reshaped the ways in which they are represented and understood. Long before the term “artificial intelligence” existed, artificial beings populated myth, ritual, and craft: Hephaestus’s golden attendants, Pygmalion’s animated ivory statue, Talos patrolling the shores of Crete, and the Golem shaped from clay are just some examples of this long history.
This conference is envisioned as an exploratory journey through the historical development of automata, robots, androids, and artificial intelligence. As the opening event of “The Art of AI”-project, which analyses whether concepts such as creativity, perception, and aesthetic judgement can be extended to AI, and what ethical and political implications this might have, the conference examines how inherited conceptions of artificial beings continue to shape the terms in which these questions are posed today. We welcome contributions from art history, philosophy, history, literary and media studies, the history of science and technology, and AI research, with the aim of bringing different genealogies, methods, and conceptual assumptions into dialogue.
⏰ Deadline: 08 November 2026
➡️ t1p.de/8n1y8
📷 Salomon de Caus, Machine with figure of Galatea pulled through the water by two dolphins, Engraving, in: Hortus Palatinus (plate 32), published by Johann Theodor de Bry, Frankfurt am Main, 1620
