Nicolas Poussin

In this course

Poussin's *Et in Arcadia Ego* serves here as a visual anchor for the seminar's meditation on Polybius the ancient historian and the tension between facticity (witnessed truth) and representation (painted illusion). The course readings use Poussin's painting as a gateway to discuss how memesis—aesthetic mimicry and spectacular image-making—can obscure or override historical fact, especially in the context of early computational systems and game design that replicate this dynamic. By invoking both the classical historian Polybius and the Baroque painter's rendering of Arcadia, the readings suggest that AI and algorithmic culture inherit this ancient problem of spectacle overwhelming evidence, necropolitics hidden beneath aesthetic seduction.

Mentioned in 1 reading