Symposium 2 Workshops

WORKSHOPS

Symposium II

There will be three parallel Workshop Sessions running between 14:00-17:00 on Thursday 29th of July. You will be able to choose which one to attend. This will be organised through the breakout rooms in ZOOM. The three workshops to choose from are:

1) Ludic Technologies: A Dance with Complexity (Prof. Natasha Lushetich)

2) Embracing disruption: music as a rehearsal for an emerging symbiosis of human and machine

(Prof. David de Roure)

3) Cultural exchange with the realm of artificial intelligence (Dr. Ali Hossaini)

Jon Satrom, Prepared Desktop, MIGC Creative Showcase, 2016.

Ludic Technologies: A Dance with Complexity

What do artists-(h)activists like jonCates, etoy, Jaromil, The Yes Men, Helen Nissenbaum, and Jon Satrom have in common? The short answer is: culture jamming. The slightly longer answer is: the use of ludus, or rule-based strategies, and paideia, improvisation-based tactics, digital détournement and la derive (the drift).

The main idea behind this workshop is that AI, as used in administration, banking, education, the gig economy, and many other spheres of life, is both an invisible (and invisibly violent) hegemonic force, and an ‘alien’ form of thought, to borrow Joseph Weizenbaum’s expression. Our current cultural experience is one of simultaneous over-determination (black-boxed AI procedures arriving at unfathomable conclusions such as ‘automatic’ bank account termination or ‘automatic’ health insurance claim refusal) and indeterminacy as constant change.

In this workshop, we’ll explore how ludic technologies, seen as material and immaterial transformation techniques and methods, can navigate this paradox. The workshop is limited to 16 participants and divided into three parts. For more details please take a look at the document below.

Workshop leader: Prof. Natasha Lushetich

Documentation:

Embracing disruption: music as a rehearsal for an emerging symbiosis of human and machine

Music has been working with AI for decades and machine for centuries. Today's machine learning research chooses music as an example of the success of the AI replacing the human. But today's music research takes a different view, where we engage with the AI (or AIs) in a co-creative process, where the AI is effective precisely because it is disruptive and surprising, and where we celebrate the artefacts and incorporate them in emerging genres. This workshop provides an opportunity to explore this work through short talks and discussion.

While AI researchers are designing for a future AI-infused world, we are the early adopters who are already living in world of creative humans and AI. What insights might we share?

Workshop leader: Prof. David de Roure

Cultural exchange with the realm of artificial intelligence

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/national-gallery-x/the-ai-gallery

National Gallery X has launched its 'AI Gallery' as the world's first cultural exchange programme with the realm of autonomous / intelligent systems (A/IS). By presenting dramas, video and digital paintings, NGX aims to stimulate two channels of discourse. The first considers the impact of A/IS holistically through stories and drama. The second analyses creative works produced by A/IS using methods drawn from the humanities and social sciences.

The AI Gallery has a concrete social purpose. Though we require machines to explain their decisions, advanced A/IS already outstrip the human comprehension. Yet we still need to work alongside and even under A/IS. Cultural exchange has a long history of trust-building, and the humanities and social sciences have sophisticated tools for analysing creativity. Clearly we cannot simply apply art criticism, psychology or anthropology to a machine's creative output.

The workshop's goal is to define a conceptual framework for understanding A/IS through their creative output.

Part 1: We will develop criteria for avoiding anthropo- or biomorphic assumptions about individuality, creativity, intention, awareness and sentience.

Part 2: We will draft definitions of agency, intention, goal-seeking and other forms of behaviour appropriate for A/IS.

Part 3: We will identify disciplines and specific methods that may be adapted for analysing the creative output of A/IS.

Workshop leader: Dr. Ali Hossaini

Documentation: