In May 2025, MEMPOP researcher Nina Cvar (University of Ljubljana) participated in the international conference Uncommon Senses V: Sensing the Social, the Environmental, and Across the Arts and Sciences, hosted by Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

The four-day event brought together scholars from across the social sciences, humanities, and the arts to explore how sensory experience shapes our understanding of a rapidly changing world. Alongside presentations and academic panels, the conference featured workshops, artistic installations, and a virtual book and art gallery, offering a rich interdisciplinary environment for discussion and exchange.

Nina’s presentation, The Affect of ‘Extimacy’ and the Impact of Generative AI, contributed to these conversations by examining the emotional and relational dimensions of machine-generated communication. Practicing an interdisciplinary approach, her talk introduced the concept of affective extimacy—a paradoxical state in which generative AI systems simulate intimate forms of social engagement despite lacking a real-world referent or human agency.

The presentation explored how large language models, trained on extensive linguistic, cultural, and social data, produce outputs that appear contextually relational, even though they operate without direct connection to embodied experience or the Other. These simulated responses, Nina argued, nonetheless evoke powerful affective effects and contribute to the construction of a seemingly coherent representational reality.

Her research opens new questions regarding the transformation of the social bond in digital environments, and how emerging technologies reshape the intimate, the collective, and the affective in contemporary culture.

More information on the presentations’ content is available here.