Ⓥ V.2 Virtual Discussion - Artist Talks
Tracks
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
Track 4
| Monday, June 24, 2024 |
| 11:40 AM - 12:30 PM |
| Virtual |
Overview
Group discussion giving virtual presenters the opportunity to discuss their work with colleagues and delegates
Details
Join the session here
This virtual discussion session will give virtual presenters the opportunity to participate in a live interactive virtual panel discussion facilitated by an academic chair. Virtual delegates will be encouraged to pre-watch the presentation videos (available via the OnAIR conference platform) and then join this discussion session, which will run through a provided Zoom link. The Aim of this session is to provide an opportunity for presenters to share and discuss their work with colleagues and for delegates to engage in Q&A. Each discussion will run for 30-50 minutes depending on how many virtual presenters and delegates are participating.
This virtual discussion session will give virtual presenters the opportunity to participate in a live interactive virtual panel discussion facilitated by an academic chair. Virtual delegates will be encouraged to pre-watch the presentation videos (available via the OnAIR conference platform) and then join this discussion session, which will run through a provided Zoom link. The Aim of this session is to provide an opportunity for presenters to share and discuss their work with colleagues and for delegates to engage in Q&A. Each discussion will run for 30-50 minutes depending on how many virtual presenters and delegates are participating.
Speaker
Dr Pablo Gobira
estudante
UEMG
AI.MAGINATION
Abstract
In this article we present the metaverse blockchain exhibition AI.MAGINATION: appropriations, hybridism, and realities (2023). An accomplishment anchored in the research of the group Laboratório de Poéticas Fronteiriças (LabFront) that combines the arts, sciences, and technologies. This work intends to present the poetic participation of the curator in the design exhibition actions carried out within AI.MAGINATION. In addition, the exhibition applies pioneering techniques of the twentieth-century avant-garde, such as appropriation. Elevating it to the context of infocognotecnologies, demonstrating how applications of this context were made in creating Visual Identity, 3D modeling in blockchain metaverse environment, and designing exhibition compositions.
Biography
Pablo Gobira is a professor doctor at the Guignard School (UEMG) and a member of the permanent staff of PPGArtes (UEMG), PPGACPS (UFMG) and PPGGOC (UFMG). Director of the Laboratório de Poéticas Fronteiriças (CNPq/UEMG).
Ms Wenran Zhao
Rhode Island School of Design
AT: Ask: Always Seek Knowledge–Lecsicon: A Collection of GPT-generated Acrostics
Abstract
This article describes the project Lecsicon, in which over 24,000 acrostics generated by OpenAI's language model GPT serve as a conduit between machine comprehension and human interpretation. Following a specific prompt, GPT made a sentence with a series of words whose first letters sequentially spelled out the given word. At a large scale, this process gives rise to intriguing behavioral patterns in the model. The resulting acrostics also elicit gripping reflections on the nature of this literary device and its role in meaning making. In this project, GPT responses were compiled into both a book and a browser-based interactive artwork by the artist.
Biography
¡wénrán zhào! is an interdisciplinary artist who works with code, technology, language, and textiles. She looks at the ever-evolving technology–touch screens, XR, Artificial Intelligence, and many more–in a nostalgic yet anachronistic way. Her works augment mundane objects or artifacts with custom software, exploring the textures of technology and reinterpreting the semiotics in interactive interfaces and sensorial experiences. At the heart of her world lies her perception of the digital and analogue world: complex networks constructed by "signs", "noise", and "heat".
She holds a bachelor degree of New Media Art from City University of Hong Kong, and will obtain her MFA in Digital + Media from Rhode Island School of Design in 2024. Her works have been exhibited in Hong Kong, London, Providence, and online. Her written pieces have been featured in Taper, The New River Journal and the RISD museum's publication.
Ms Avital Meshi
University of California, Davis
AT: Playing Peekaboo with a Generative AI
Abstract
In a video art installation, a family of three- a mother, a father, and their teenage son - interacts with a generative AI model in a contemporary rendition of a game of peekaboo. The installation, spread across three screens, captures each family member as they alternately cover and uncover their faces with their hands. Upon each reveal, the generative AI alters their appearances, presenting an ever-changing visual narrative. This transformation in appearance not only destabilizes established notions of identity but also invites a reevaluation of the concepts of belonging, hierarchy, kinship, and stability. Furthermore, it challenges the conventional attributes of age, gender, and race that typically define the dynamics within a nuclear family. The purpose of this project is to spark a conversation on identity politics, encouraging viewers to explore our interconnectedness from a renewed perspective.
Biography
Avital Meshi is a new media and performance artist exploring the impact of AI on human identity and sociality. Inspired by Posthumanist theories, Meshi invites viewers to become entangled with AI algorithms, reclaim agency, and spark discussions on identity transformation. Meshi holds an MFA from UC Santa Cruz’s Digital Arts and New Media program and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds an MSc in Behavioral Biology. Currently completing her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UC Davis. Meshi’s work has been exhibited widely, including at NYU, CURRENTS New Media, and SIGGRAPH.
The Aha Agent: A Role for Generative AI in Team-based Collaborative Creative Production Ray Lc
None
AT: The “Aha” Agent: a Role for Generative AI in Team-based Collaborative Creative Production
Abstract
Artists and creatives have begun to utilize Generative AI (GenAI) to create inspiring work by leveraging its access to large datasets that can provide unexpected outputs in the human corpus of possibilities. So far, research has focused on how individual creative professionals work with GenAI, neglecting the role that other humans have in the process of co-creativity with GenAI. Here, we give examples of works generated in human creative teams while utilizing GenAI agents as ways to inspire creative ideas or implement human-level productions. We also share research into the way teams overcome challenges working with GenAI, and examine the way we perceive GenAI in machine-supported creative production. Our image and video examples generated by Stable Diffusion provide a case study for how this creative process with human and AI collaborators work in human-AI co-creativity.
Biography
Dr Lawrence Bird
Independent
AT: Cargo
Abstract
This talk presents research and outcomes from a project presented in its very early stages at ISEA 2022. "Friction" was a research-creation project investigating shipping networks, their physical environments (landscapes, architecture, and infrastructure), and the regimes of image that capture, monitor and represent them. The project was funded by a Research/Creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
It began with research into the shipping industry and regimes of image associated with it, extraction of publicly accessible live data on shipping routes, harvesting of aerial and satellite imagery of port and canal landscapes, and processing of this imagery to create a number of experimental media works, including the video projection piece Cargo created as part of a Themed Commissioned Residency at Trinity Square Video, Toronto. Friction took as its starting point the observation that global shipping networks and systems – predicated on the smooth flow of materials and information – seem inevitably to provoke their own breakdown. Since the project began, this condition - and the imbrication of shipping networks in geo-politics - has become even more pronounced.
These spaces and their representation have built into them a number of contradictions. To serve these immaterial networks of transportation and communication – which actually carry immense amounts of materials – the material environments of ports and canals are transformed from ecological and cultural spaces into spaces serving machines. These mechanized spaces are rendered by the regimes of image on which the networks depend – mapping and surveillance systems – in images that, when examined closely, are rife with distortions that suggest a new and strange hybridity between the materiality of the built environment, and the image that represents it. This talk presents research behind the project, its key pre-occupations, and one of its outputs, Cargo
It began with research into the shipping industry and regimes of image associated with it, extraction of publicly accessible live data on shipping routes, harvesting of aerial and satellite imagery of port and canal landscapes, and processing of this imagery to create a number of experimental media works, including the video projection piece Cargo created as part of a Themed Commissioned Residency at Trinity Square Video, Toronto. Friction took as its starting point the observation that global shipping networks and systems – predicated on the smooth flow of materials and information – seem inevitably to provoke their own breakdown. Since the project began, this condition - and the imbrication of shipping networks in geo-politics - has become even more pronounced.
These spaces and their representation have built into them a number of contradictions. To serve these immaterial networks of transportation and communication – which actually carry immense amounts of materials – the material environments of ports and canals are transformed from ecological and cultural spaces into spaces serving machines. These mechanized spaces are rendered by the regimes of image on which the networks depend – mapping and surveillance systems – in images that, when examined closely, are rife with distortions that suggest a new and strange hybridity between the materiality of the built environment, and the image that represents it. This talk presents research behind the project, its key pre-occupations, and one of its outputs, Cargo
Biography
I am a settler artist of Welsh and English heritage, living on Treaty One territory and in the homeland of the Métis Nation. I am fascinated by the intersection of space, material, and image. My media artwork explores urban sites, geographies, and traces of land use through video, short films, image processing, projection mapping and installation in public places. This work usually focuses on anomalies in represen-tations of the Earth, connecting the historical scarring of the land under colonial regimes of land delinea-tion and exploitation, with systems of surveillance and image commodification current to our own time, in particular Google Earth. This work has been heavily supported by Canada Council for the Arts and local arts agencies. My work has been screened or installed in Winnipeg, Toronto, Brussels, Bath, Manizales, Barcelona, Berlin and London (at several venues including Furtherfield Gallery).
I also write, on the embedding of cultural histories film, media, and architecture; including for Arbeiter Ring Press Books, Intellect Books, Leonardo, Canadian Architect, and Azure magazine. I have co-edited two books on public art and architecture, and contributed chapters to several books on spaces of digital representation. My PhD in History & Theory of Architecture (McGill, 2009) focused on the image of urban destruction in anime; I also hold an MSc from London School of Economics (2000) and a profes-sional degree in architecture. I’ve worked closely with Indigenous communities on the architecture of mu-seums and interpretive trails. I’ve taught, mainly seminars and design studios on media and space, at McGill University, University of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Film Group, Kanazawa International Design Institute (Japan), and Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
My artwork and writing have been presented at ISEA on two occasions (2017, 2022); in 2022 I presented two artist’s talks, a video screening, and a full-length paper.
Professor Tanuja Mishra
Assistant Professor
University of California, Davis
AT: Cooperating System
Abstract
“Cooperating System” is a speculative writing project that goes beyond the conventional notion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an invisible, all-knowing force built on values of efficiency and scale. It is written as a script for a TV series in the future that has both AI and human actors. Each episode finds human and AI characters co-habiting in slice-of-life situations within a diversity of cultural contexts. The AI characters depicted in this screenplay have unique personalities and idiosyncrasies. They exist as independent beings and forge relationships that can be deep and meaningful but can also be messy and adversarial.
Biography
Tanuja Mishra is an Assistant Professor of Design at UC Davis where she directs the “AI Beings” Lab. She is a designer, artist and researcher who works at the intersection of critical and speculative design and social practice. She investigates historical, cultural, and aesthetic implications of technology to imagine futures that are both aspirational and equitable. Her current research focuses on questioning machine intelligence and building AI on the values of care, trust, and interconnection.
Her work has been presented internationally, at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, South Asian Visual Arts Centre in Toronto, Arthur M. Sackler Museum and Gallery 224 at Harvard University, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, National Institute of Design and CEPT University Ahmedabad, and USID (Universal, Sustainable, Inclusive Design for social change) India Foundation. Through her social practice, she has designed community-based interventions in collaboration with government organizations such as Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism and City of Nanaimo.
Session chair
Ray LC
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
City University Of Hong Kong
