The Resonant Structure of Technology : From Image to Creativity

Wang, Xingdu and Gere, Charlie and Rose, Emma (2026) The Resonant Structure of Technology : From Image to Creativity. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines how artistic practice can profoundly reshape our understanding and use of artificial intelligence. Current AI exists dialectically as both opportunity and crisis. Its primary opportunity lies in dramatically expanding the foundational forms of human collaboration—quantitatively and combinatorially—thereby extending the boundaries of collective intelligence and creativity. Rather than merely augmenting existing tools, this expansion reconstructs collaboration itself as a distributed, emergent, and networked process, shifting human intelligence from individual or small-scale modes toward global-scale, cross-species, and human–machine hybrid co-creation. At the core of the thesis lies one fundamental question: how might artificial intelligence be guided toward an organic integration into planetary intelligence? Can it move beyond the dominant paradigm of statistical fitting and recursive automaticity to become an open, resonant, and truly symbiotic node within a planetary intelligence network? This question frames the entire study as a concrete response to the structural tensions exposed by contemporary generative models and agentic systems. While AI greatly amplifies collaborative potential, it remains, as an autonomous technical entity, in a stage of insufficient intelligence. Numerous cases demonstrate that it achieves only statistical prediction and pattern replication (Audry, 2021), falling short of genuine open-ended creation (Zylinska, 2020b). These limitations generate systemic concerns regarding uncontrollability and unintended consequences. Nevertheless, as an open technology, AI can still be steered toward more organic integration into planetary civilization and human decision-making through sustained, multi-perspective human intervention (Bridle, 2022). Contemporary artificial intelligence fabricates quasi-existents and abstract subjects—simulacra of consciousness, affect, and creativity—that lack intrinsic vitality or being-in-the-world. This process disrupts fundamental distinctions between existence, humanity, and intelligence, resulting in alienation of subjectivity and the degradation of a resonant organic world into a computable megastructure (Hui, 2019b)(Hui, 2024). In this context, artistic practice emerges as an irreplaceable epistemic path. The practice developed in this thesis functions not as illustration of pre-existing theory but as a dynamic research apparatus: an interlocking system of input, processing, output, and feedback that makes AI’s preferences, boundaries, and response modalities traceable, while actively reshaping human meaning-making and relationality.