Karen Patel
Papers
1
Total Citations
14
H-Index
1
About
Dr. Karen Patel is a leading scholar at the intersection of creative labor, digital culture, and posthumanism. Her research critically examines how technological disruption reshapes artistic identity, expertise, and the very nature of creative work. Her most cited work, the 2024 article *‘People don’t buy art, they buy artists’: Robot artists – work, identity, and expertise*, has garnered 14 citations and is a landmark study in the field. In this paper, Dr. Patel provides the first in-depth analysis of Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist, using it as a case study to deconstruct the social construction of artistic identity. By weaving together scholarship on posthumanism, creative assemblages, and the sociology of work, she argues that the robot artist challenges traditional notions of expertise and authorship, revealing how value is assigned not to the art object but to the perceived human (or posthuman) creator behind it. Dr. Patel’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of creative careers, AI ethics, and the evolving boundaries of human-machine collaboration in the arts.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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