ISSN: XXXX-XXXX SPECIAL ISSUE 2025

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Course exercises and content was accompanied by

wrien reﬂections and extensive philosophical and

ethnical discussions about originality, authorship,

artistic control.

The course was designed to guide students

through a structured artistic process with Gen AI,

which included generating initial ideas, critically

reﬁning them with Gen AI tools, and continuously

documenting their experiences and thoughts. This

iterative process allowed students to evaluate and

integrate Gen AI’s inﬂuence on their concepts and

ﬁnal work, as well as how their own thoughts, feel-

ings, and perceptions about Gen AI evolved through

their experiences using it.

This course was intended as an exploratory

model for integrating Gen AI into art education,

inviting students to critically assess and creatively

employ Gen AI. The aim was to foster a critical

understanding of Gen AI’s role and impact on their

artistic practices and self-perception as artists.

The artworks, processes and statements on the

following pages showcases the intersection of art,

education, and Gen AI, contributing insights into

how emerging artists adapt to and critique Gen AI’s

growing presence. It underscores the role of Gen AI

in expanding the boundaries of artistic practice and

invites the community to consider the implications

FOREWORD

Explorations in Art and Generative AI, high-

lights ways in which visual art students in the

selected topics course VISA 3830: Explorations in

Art and AI (Fall 2024) engaged with generative Arti-

ﬁcial Intelligence (Gen AI) to create original artworks

that are both reﬂective of and responsive to con-

temporary discussions in art and technology. These

students investigated the role of Gen AI in each of

their unique art practices, exploring AI as a tool,

collaborator, and/or conceptual inﬂuence. These

artworks produced in the course and accompanying

exhibition (which took place at the TRU Art Gallery

March 17-29, 2025) is timely and relevant, as it delves

into the cultural, ethical, environmental and creative

dimensions of using Gen AI in the arts.

Students in this course were challenged to use

Gen AI in ideation, proposal and statement writing,

creation, and critique, examining how Gen AI could

be engaged at various stages of artistic produc-

tion. They experimented with image and text-based

Gen AI platforms to brainstorm, create content,

and produce wrien materials supporting artistic

production. Through this process, students encoun-

tered Gen AI as a sometimes-useful tool fraught

with ethical dilemmas. The process has been both

exciting and worrisome as students explored the

potential uses and impacts of this technology.

Twyla Exner

Assistant Teaching Professor,

Department of Communication and Visual Art

Ethics

All artworks, statements and research data are

shared in accordance with TRU’s Research Ethics

Board and with permission of the students.

Use of AI: This foreword was produced with the

assistance of CHAT-GPT 40 by adapting a statement

wrien for the art exhibition that accompanied this

course. To produce this statement, I customized

a GPT by feeding it course content, including the

course outline, assignment parameters, ethics

application, grant application and lecture content.

I then described to the customized GPT that a dis-

semination outcome of the research completed

in this course is an art exhibition. I described the

objective of the exhibition and the context of the

particular art gallery and asked it to generate a cura-

torial statement. I adjusted my prompt and iterated

ﬁve versions of this statement using the custom-

ized GPT. I then compiled elements from each of the

ﬁve statements to form one statement, then heavily

edited it to ensure it reﬂected my intentions.

of human-machine collaborations in art-making.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to:

Ű All of the students, including the students

who were in the class but did not contribute

works to the exhibition or this publication,

for being brave in trying new things and

for trusting me through the process.

Ű Nicole Favron, Research Assistant and

Curator of the “Explorations in Art and

Generative AI” exhibition held at the

TRU Art Gallery, March 17-29, 2025.

Ű TRU’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and

Learning Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Scholars program for supporting this research

through workshops and funding. Special thank

you to Alexis Brown, Coordinator of Learning

and Faculty Development, for her guidance in

navigating research approaches and methods.

Figure 1. Exhibit Installation 1 - Southeast View (Photo credit: Twyla Exner)