Kevin Hamilton
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Research Programmes
Comics & Machines (COMMA 2026)
Comics & Machines (COMMA 2026) was an international conference on sequential art, computational technologies, and machine intelligence, held on 22–23 April 2026 across two venues — the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and Uppsala University. The conference set out to critically rethink comics as active computational configurations rather than passive recipients of technological change.
The conference's argument was that comics are undergoing a profound transformation — toward synthetic comics, operational images, data-driven visualisation, and embodied, non-visual forms — that the field's existing frameworks of narratology, text-image correlation, and human-centred authorship struggle to account for. Rather than framing this as rupture, COMMA 2026 situated the transformation within a longer history of computational rationality: a lineage in which the medium has continuously negotiated the demands of efficiency, scalability, and technical constraint.
Across two days and ten thematic sessions, artists, scholars, and technologists examined comics as technical media, as test environments for AI systems, and as sites of artistic research — experimental configurations that generate knowledge through making, rather than merely representing it. The full programme is documented below.
Organisers: Ilan Manouach, Anna Foka & Andre Holzapfel
Scientific Committee: Gaëtan Le Coarer, Jaqueline Berndt, Jan Baetens, Pedro Moura, Keith Tilford, Gareth Brookes, Everardo Reyes, Anna Foka, Isabelle Gribomont, Benoît Crucifix, Ray Whitcher, Jan von Bonsdorff, Per Israelson, Björn-Olav Dozo, and Andre Holzapfel.
Funders: AI Futures of Culture and Memory Cluster
Wallenberg Autonomous Systems in Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) — Project Number 802, Synthetic Pasts Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation — MAW 2024.0033 Culture Code: Developing Deep Sustainable AI, Swedish Research Council, Network Grant for Ground Breaking Technologies — 2025-07595 The Knowledge Codex – Comics as Expansive Graphic Repositories, Swedish Research Council, Humanities and the Arts — 2025-01196
PROGRAMME
Print and Cognition at the Biological Computer Lab, 1958–1976
01
Atlas Comicus: On Mapping Production and Seriality
Mathieu Li-Goyette
University of Amsterdam
02
Comics as By-Product
David Mitchell
Independent Researcher (Chicago)
03
When Comics Chat: A Deep Prior for Text-Balloon Reading Order
Ioannis Siglidis
Pioneer Center for AI, Copenhagen
04
Spatial Practice in Comics at the Era of GenAI,
VSI and Mixed Realities
Gaëtan Le Coarer
Associate researcher in CiTu-Paragraphe, Paris 8
05
Comics Pages as Audit Devices for Generative AI:
A Gutter/Ghost Framework
Andrea Tosti
Lancaster University
06
Whitewash Cartoonization:
Accidental Indexicality into Cartoon Space?
Eyal Gruss
Holon Institute of Technology
07
Computational Contact Sheets: Synthetic Photography and
the Shifting Technical Identity of Comics
Abdelalim Amine Slimani
Independent Artist, Casablanca
08
Image GenAI and Writing Morphologies
Simon Grennan
University of Chester
09
A Practitioner-Researcher’s Self-Reflective Reflection on
the Role of Digital Drawing Tools Used for Comics-Based Research
Yiqi Zhang
London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
10
The Plotted Narrative:
Friction, Code, and Materiality in Computational Comics
A.B Fominaya
Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute
11
Riso Comics – Creating Narratives in Dialogue with the Machine
Gunnar Krantz
Malmö University
12
Drawing in the Glow of Generative Machines:
Comics as Research Method for Speculative Futures
Lucy Perineau, Deborah Lambert & Aurore Fransolet
Université de Poitiers / Université libre de Bruxelles
13
Monsters, Mercenaries and Me:
Comics Research as Plaited Exegesis
Ray Whitcher
Uppsala University
14
Comics and/as Mechanics:
Intersections between Comics, Zines and Games
Hailey J Austin
Abertay University
15
How to Talk about Technology without Talking about Technology? A Practice-Based Approach in Comics Art
Céline Pieters
University of Vienna
16
We Have Always Been Sequential: Comics as Experimental Methodology for Language-Based Artistic Research
Thomas Ballhausen & Elena Peytchinska
University Mozarteum Salzburg / University of Applied Arts Vienna
17
Speculative Autoethnography Through Comics:
Reversing Big Tech’s Gaze and Reclaiming the Story
Maria Ryabova
University of Pittsburgh
18
Comparative Analysis of the Uses of AI in Comics between the Two Spheres of Production
Björn-Olav Dozo
University of Liège
19
Stretching the Tension: Alternative Comic as a Disobedient Machine
Sabine Teyssonneyre
Université de Poitiers
20
Against the Algos: How Swedish Comic Artists Navigate an Uncertain and Evolving Labor Market in the Age of Digitalization
Robert Aman & Erik Nylander
Linköping University
21
Digital Handmade: Towards a Media Archeology of Graphic Tablets and Software in Comics Drawing
Giorgio Busi Rizzi & Claudia Cerulo
Ghent University / Università Mercatorum
22
Metaphorical Comics at the Interface of AI and Mental Health: Toward Patient-Centered Visual Expression
Jiahao Ji & Jingyao Cai
Kingston University
23
