The Latent Spaces of Culture: The Aesthetics, Epistemology, and Politics of AI
Workshop and Roundtable
September 10–12, 2026
Stephens Hall 470
Organized by Hannes Bajohr and Antonio Somaini with the Department of German. Hosted by the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS)
Latent spaces—the mathematical structures underlying modern AI systems—enable the analysis, generation, and transformation of complex data such as text, images, and sound—in short, culture. Yet their epistemological, aesthetic, and political implications remain undertheorized. This workshop examines latent spaces beyond their technical importance as cultural forces that shape memory, narrative, and visual regimes. Its topics range from the conceptual and historical foundations of latent space to its manifestations in literature, visual culture, contemporary art, and political communication, asking how AI systems encode views of the world, produce new cultural forms, and transform our relation to memory. By bringing the humanities into conversation with the technical sciences, the workshop develops new critical vocabularies for understanding how AI models—and increasingly remakes—the cultural world.
This workshop is part of the France-Berkeley Fund project “The Latent Spaces of Culture.”
Thursday, September 10
2:00 p.m. — Hannes Bajohr & Antonio Somaini, Welcome and Introduction
2:15 p.m. — Nicholas Baer, “A Latent History of the Poor Image”
2:45 p.m. — Shane Denson, “Synthetic Image/Synthetic Imagination”
3:15 p.m. — Break
3:25 p.m. — Jacob Gaboury, “Rendering Latent Space: Otherprop, Synthetic Data, and the Domestic Interior”
Friday, September 11
9:30 a.m. — Antonio Somaini, “On the Concept of ‘Latent Spaces of Culture’”
10:05 a.m. — Hannes Bajohr, “From Latent Space to World Model”
10:40 a.m. — Break
10:55 a.m. — Francesco Fritz, “Latent Spaces as Metaphorical Geometries”
11:30 a.m. — Alexandre Gefen, “The Style of AI”
12:05 p.m. — Lunch
1:20 p.m. — Sonja Thiel, “Latent Time”
1:55 p.m. — Ramona Naddaff & Nina Beguš, “Polychronic Models”
2:30 p.m. — Break
2:45 p.m. — Alban Leveau-Vallier, “Ghosts in the Machine: The Symbolic Efficiency of Latent Space Entities”
3:20 p.m. — Dana Karout, "The Latent Smells of Culture(s)"
Saturday, September 12
9:30 a.m. — Primavera De Filippi, “Beyond the Promptable Latent Space: Off-Grid Aesthetics and Cognitive Sovereignty”
10:05 a.m. — Barnabé Sauvage, “Holy Slop! A Generative Atlas of Slopaganda in Palestine”
10:40 a.m. — Break
10:55 a.m. — Kayla van Kooten, “Towards a ‘Mean Girl’ Aesthetic: Algorithmic Beauty and Latent Spaces”
11:30 a.m. — Alexandra Gilliams, “Psychopolitics in Latent Space: On Trevor Paglen’s Cyclops”
12:05 p.m. — Lunch
1:20 p.m. — Concluding Roundtable: “AI Infrastructures and Hallucinations,” Fabian Offert, Alex Saum-Pascual, Michael Pollan, Nina Beguš & David Bates,
3:00 p.m. — Break and End of the Public Part of the Workshop
3:15 p.m. — Closed-Door Discussion: Publication Planning and Next Steps