The Talking Head
Et animeret spil om AI-fili og AI-fobi
Keywords:
AI-philia, AI-phobia, talking heads, ludic method, playAbstract
AI purports to be one of the greatest mysteries of our time. With its opaque programming and hidden algorithms, it appears as magic, a ‘black box’ that sparks both anxiety and fascination, resistance and hope. Should we fear AI, or should we embrace its promise of knowledge and salvation for humanity? Current AI-philia and AI-phobia are, however, not unprecedented. In the past, new technologies of artificially constructed talking heads have caused similar emotions and discussions. The article on “The Talking Head” examines the profound history of AI and shows that polarised conceptions – love and fear – have always nurtured fundamental discourses of artificial intelligence. A principal interest of the article is also to investigate the prehistory of AI through experiments with ludic methodology. Inspired by medieval ludic practices and 16th-century plays, the article is the result of playful scientific research that revolves around performance, talking heads and interactions with AI. We conclude that AI in some form or other has always influenced and shaped us as humans. Historicising insights may help us acknowledge the need for more balanced discussions today. Most importantly, we argue that ludic methodology has the potential to raise new questions and shed new light on the most complex issues and problems of our current condition, including the challenges and promises of AI.
References
Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition, Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Arlt, Fabian og Hans-Jürgen Arlt: Gamification of Life and the Gaming Society, Cham, Springer, 2023.
Borlik, Todd Andrew: “More than Art’: Clockwork Automata, the Extemporizing Actor and the Brazen Head in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay” in The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature, Wendy Beth Hyman (ed.), London, Routledge, 2011.
Caillois, Roger: Man, Play and Games, Meyer Barash (trans.), Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2001 [1958].
Camille, Michael: The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Carruthers, Mary: The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Collins, D. J.: “Albertus, Magnus or Magus?: magic, natural philosophy, and religious reform in the late Middle Ages” in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 63, nr. 1, 2010, pp. 1-44.
Corsini, Matteo: Rosaio della vita, Firenze, Societá Poligrafica Italiana, 1845 [1373].
Deliyannis, Ioannis (ed.): Gamification: Analysis, Design, Development and Ludification, London, IntechOpen, 2023.
Duncan, Sophie: Shakespeare’s Props, New York, Routledge, 2019.
Eamon, William: “Technology as magic in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance” in Janus, vol. 70, 1983, pp. 171-212.
Eamon, William: Science and the secrets of nature: books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994.
Greene, Robert: The Honorable Historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, J. A. Lavin (ed,), London, Ernest Benn, 1969.
Gimpel, Jean: The Medieval Machine. The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, New York, Penguin Books, 1977.
Henricks, Thomas S.: Play and the human condition, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2016.
Hersey, George L.: Falling in Love with Statues. Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present, Chicago og London, The University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Hermann, Pernille, Hans Henrik L. Jørgensen og Laura K. Skinnebach: Res Ludens – The Playing Thing: Towards a Post-anthropocentric Ontology of Play, Koncept for indstiftende LUMA-seminar (Ludic Middle Ages: Games, Play, Animation), Aarhus, Aarhus Universitet, 2024.
Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, London, Temple Smith, 1970 [1938].
Jones, Caroline A. (ed.): Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press og List Visual Arts Center, 2006.
Jørgensen, Hans Henrik Lohfert: “Four Fundamental Concepts of Animation: Mechanical and Organic, Supernatural and Phenomenological” in The Living Image in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Theoretical and Historical Approaches, Kamil Kopania, Henning Laugerud og Zuzanna Sarnecka (eds.), New York og London, Routledge, 2025, pp. 13-32.
Jørgensen, Hans Henrik Lohfert, Henning Laugerud og Laura Katrine Skinnebach: Animation between Magic, Miracles and Mechanics. Natural and Supernatural Principles of Life in Medieval Imagery, Aarhus, Unipress, 2023.
Jørgensen, Hans Henrik Lohfert, Pernille Leth-Espensen, og Laura Katrine Skinnebach: “Dukken som animeret billede – mellem idolatri og idollatry, mellem dukkekult og dukkekærlighed” in Periskop, vol. 27, 2022.
Kang, Minsoo: Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2011.
Kang, Minsoo og Ben Halliburton: “The Android of Albertus Magnus: A Legend of Artificial Being” in AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal og Sarah Dillon (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 72-94.
Knapp, James A.: Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present, Chicago og London, University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics, Chicago og London, University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Ohler, Peter og Stein, Jan-Philipp: “Venturing into the uncanny valley of mind – The influence of mind attribution on the acceptance of human-like characters in a virtual reality setting” in Cognition, vol. 160, 2017, pp. 43-50.
Oing, Michelle: “Holy Puppets: The Double Nature of the Medieval Bust Reliquary” in Denkste: Puppe, vol. 1, nr. 1, 2020, pp. 28-37.
Popat, Jahnavi: “Top 10 AI Influencers You Can’t Ignore in 2025”, Fluid AI, Fluid AI International Corporation, 2025, https://www.fluid.ai/blog/top-10-ai-influencers-you-cant-ignore-in-2025.
Porter, Chloe: Making and unmaking in early modern English drama: Spectators, aesthetics and incompletion, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014.
Raessens, Joost: “Playful identities, or the ludification of culture in, Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, vol. 1, nr. 1, 2006, pp. 52-57.
Raessens, Joost: “The ludification of culture” in Rethinking gamification, Mathias Fuchs, Sonia Fizek, Paolo Ruffino og Niklas Schrape (eds.), Lüneburg, Hybrid Publishing Lab, 2014, pp. 91-114.
Robertson, Jennifer: Robo Sapiens Japandicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2017.
Seymour, Mike, Dan Lovallo, Kai Riemer, Alan R. Dennis og Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan: “AI with a Human Face: The case for – and against – digital employees” in Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2023.
Shaw-Garlock, Glenda: “Gendered by Design: Gender Codes in Social Robotics” in Social Robots: Boundaries, Potential, Challenges, Marco Nørskov (ed.), Farnham, Routledge, 2016, pp. 241-261.
Sicart, Miguel: Play Matters, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2014, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/play-matters.
Sicart, Miguel: “Towards an Ethics of Homo Ludens” in Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry, Vassiliki Rapti og Eric Gordon (eds.), Boston, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 21-45.
Skinnebach, Laura Katrine: “Det ludiske begær: Begær og frelse hos Hrotsvit af Ganderheim” in Periskop, vol. 30, 2023, pp. 36-53.
Stevens, Quentin: The Ludic City: Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces, New York, Routledge, 2007.
Thomas Aquinas: On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles, vol. 3: Providence, Part II, Vernon J. Bourke (trans.), New York, Image Books, 1956.
Tostati, Alonso: Super libro Numerorum explanatio litteralis amplissima nunc Primum edita in apertum, vol. 2., Venedig, Peter von Liechtenstein, 1528.
Truitt, Elly Rachel: Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
Truitt, Elly Rachel: “Demons and Devices: Artificial and Augmented Intelligence before AI” in AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal og Sarah Dillon (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 49-71.
White, Lynn Townsend: Medieval Technology and Social Change, London, Oxford University Press, 1962.
Wolfe, Cary: What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
