Our workshop is designed as a research Live Action Role Play (LARP) for playful audiences. This 2-hour session will combine LARP narratives, techniques, improvisation, and interactive activities around the question - “In the era of rapidly advancing AI, what role does copyright play in achieving equity or creating new disparities?”
The workshop is the second meeting of the 2024 Planetary Copyright Congress, a LARP that tells the story of how first contact with extraterrestrials sparks a transformation of copyright law towards acknowledging a radically plural Universe and equitable systems for all beings. The first PCC, hosted online in December 2023, was a collaboration between Furtherfield and the ArTechLaw Network, funded by an ARC Discovery Grant and by the University of Exeter. Participants from a range of disciplines played delegates representing the Visual Arts Delegation, to address and reimagine critical questions around the intersection of copyright and Justice and draft a Cosmic Arts Copyright Convention.
The ISEA workshop will focus on a stream of this larger exploration. Role-playing participants will be asked to engage with copyright implications for visual arts in the age of artificial intelligence in relation to Knowledge Justice and Global Majority Justice, in the alternative reality of the Cosmic Confederation of Universal Beings. Questions like, "How can global majority interests rebalance the copyright system?" and "What languages, forms of expression, economic systems, access priorities, and standards shape the production, distribution and governance of knowledge and visual art?" are put to the group to devise responses in character.
Our method is playful, open, and collaborative - welcoming and encouraging participants to improvise in real-time scenarios. Briefing printouts will be provided to introduce the themes and narrative worlds, equipping attendees for structured play. The session will conclude with a facilitated learning and feedback session to ensure an engaging, enriching experience for participants, and offering an invitation to engage with the broader research project.
Our workshop stands out due to its blend of legal expertise, creative arts, and experimental and playful performance techniques. Designed for diverse disciplines, no prior knowledge of copyright is necessary, making it equally valuable for digital copyright veterans and newcomers.
In line with ISEA’s values, ethics approval will be sought through UTS. Participants will be provided with information and consent forms in relation to the workshop’s methods and future use of artefacts, images, words, and other contributions of participants. All participants will be treated as co-creators of materials generated by the workshop which will be disseminated under Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA, subject to participants’ consent. A key element of the feedback session will be to ensure that all participants are aware of, and content with, the plans for future use of materials, and that cultural sensitivities are appropriately addressed.
We envision this workshop as a playful mode to engage with plural, speculative, and More-than-Human perspectives on the transformative impact of AI on copyright. We seek your support in making this workshop available to a broader audience at ISEA, vitally expanding the diversity in participation and impact.
NOTE:
Participants will be required to remove all footwear to enter the workshop space.
PRESENTERS:
Kate Genevieve, University of Sussex
Prof Isabella Alexander, University of Technology Sydney
Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield
Andrea Wallace, University of Exeter
