Rozental,Sonjade Rooij,Alwin2025-09-232025-09-232025Rozental, S & de Rooij, A 2025, 'Neither tool nor collaborator : Rethinking human–AI co-creativity in artistic practice with material engagement theory'. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ktqgz_v110.31234/osf.io/ktqgz_v1https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/103168Human–AI co-creativity is often understood through a tool-use or collaboration frame, obscuring the relational dynamics of artistic practice with machine learning (ML) systems. To advance the field, we recast such artistic practice through Material Engagement Theory (MET), emphasizing how creative and aesthetic processes emerge in sustained relations between artist and system. We examined 18 contemporary artists’ engagements with ML from 54 documents using a qualitative, interpretive, and framework-guided approach. Our findings show how artists and ML systems co-constitute creative and aesthetic properties by mutually discovering and attuning to each other’s affordances, where creativity unfolds along a control-chance continuum driven by creative and aesthetic thinging, enabling a mutual aesthetic becoming through sustained interaction. Key factors include developing artistic intuition for ML, internalisation, and the evolving role of the meta-artist. Herewith, we contribute MET as a framework for enriching our understanding of human–AI co-creativity as emergent and relational.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccessaesthetic experienceAI artartificial intelligence (AI)artistic practicehuman-AI co-creativitymachine learning (ML)material engagement theoryPaperGeneral rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. - Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. - You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain - You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal" Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.12173625417https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/d335b812-f9df-4b9b-b51e-f74a1a82b28c(c) Universiteit van TilburgRozental, Sonjade Rooij, Alwin§0000-0002-9840-4892