Last September I wrote an entry for this blog that ask in its title and the body of its text “Is there a culture of the artist book?” I was hoping that there would be some comments and responses that might engage with and attempt to define the potential of artist book culture. Unfortunately, my post received no response at all.
Therefore, I took my query to AI (chatgpt) and asked it the same questions that were in my previous blog post. Its response began by stating the following regarding what makes up the culture of the artist book:
“The culture of the artist book is constituted by the intersection of practice, discourse, materiality, circulation, and community. Unlike conventional book culture or fine art culture alone, the artist book exists in a hybrid space where:
- “Authorship is often total (artist as writer, designer, printer, binder, publisher).
- “Material decisions (paper, binding, scale, durability) are inseparable from meaning.
- “Reading is redefined as a spatial, temporal, tactile, and performative act.
- “Distribution frequently bypasses mainstream publishing and gallery systems.
- “Value may resist market logics in favor of conceptual, experiential, or political aims.
“This culture is sustained not only by objects but by networks: artist-run presses, book fairs, zine libraries, special collections, teaching studios, online archives, and informal peer exchange.”
It then addressed, pursuant to my questions in the post, information regarding the scale, cultural levels and counterculture (I am not including these answers here, but try seeing what it says by searching yourself using my Sept. 15, 2025 posts questions).
Next, because I knew I had to write this blog post and that just after it is published that I would being co-chairing the CBAA Affiliate Society session Affiliate Society session at CAA on February 19 in Chicago I thought it might be interesting to see how AI would aggregate information to produce a response to the questions of our CFP for the conference. It began its response stating:
“AI’s relationship to the artist book can be understood as both a disruptive force and a critical mirror—one that reshapes authorship, materiality, and authenticity while simultaneously heightening the significance of the book as a tactile object.
“AI intervenes first at the level of authorship. By generating text, images, layouts, or conceptual structures, AI complicates the idea of the singular author traditionally associated with the artist book. Instead, authorship becomes distributed among human intention, algorithmic processes, training data, and cultural histories embedded in the machine. This destabilization aligns the artist book with long-standing conceptual and postmodern practices that already challenge originality, while updating them for a computational age.
“At the level of materiality, AI intensifies the contrast between the digital and the physical. While AI operates immaterially—through code, datasets, and probabilistic systems—the artist book insists on haptic engagement: weight, texture, sequencing, and bodily interaction. In this sense, AI does not negate materiality but reframes it as a site of resistance and reflection, where physical form asserts presence against digital abstraction. The artist book becomes a space where digital processes are translated, constrained, or made legible through material means.
“AI also reshapes production and process. Artists may use AI as a collaborator, tool, or subject, influencing design decisions, narrative structures, or visual languages. This hybrid workflow challenges traditional craft hierarchies while raising questions about labor, automation, and value—issues that echo broader cultural concerns in the digital age.
“From a theoretical perspective, AI brings frameworks such as posthumanism, media archaeology, critical algorithm studies, and feminist or decolonial critiques into dialogue with book art. These lenses foreground how power, bias, race, and gender are embedded in datasets and technological systems, positioning the artist book as a critical platform for exposing and contesting these structures.
“Finally, in terms of exhibition and access, AI complicates how artist books are displayed and experienced. Digital simulations, interactive components, or AI-driven interpretation can expand access while simultaneously raising concerns about mediation and loss of tactile intimacy. This tension underscores the artist book’s unique position as an object that resists full digitization.
“In sum, AI’s relationship to the artist book is not merely technological but conceptual: it redefines authorship, heightens the meaning of material presence, and positions the artist book as a critical site for negotiating authenticity, identity, and power in the digital age.”
What I find both fascinating and disturbing is how quickly this information was gleaned by AI from other ideas. However, there really is nothing here that is unique or that we did not know before, if only on an intrinsic instinctual level.
What I find that gives me hope is that it (AI) cannot yet understand the why of the aesthetic pursuit. When we insist on haptic engagement with the artist book, we resist the immaterial in favor of understanding not just the tactile but also the virtual. This opposition is a position from which, perhaps, a new synthesis of the haptic and the virtual will arise. I hope to see some more development of this possibility in our CAA session this February, just as we did last June at CBAA. However, as emphasis upon the virtual continues, will the physical, tactile, haptic artist book lose its relevance and importance? I think not, because I will not join the myriads of art critics that have predicted the demise of this or that art due to advancing technology. What I do believe is that the continued use of AI with book arts and book arts with AI will change our assessment of both. In what ways they will change, we can only guess.
Peter J. Tanner (He, Él, Ele) is Associate Instructor of Spanish at the University of Utah and Editor of Openings: Studies in Book Art, the journal of the College Book Art Association. His research focuses on artist books from Latin America.
