On Art & AI is a two-day conference exploring how artists engage critically, conceptually and artistically with discourses around artificial intelligence, creativity, intelligence, labour and ethics.
The conference took place in the context of You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens festival program by Onassis Stegi, unfolding through two strands; “Creating with AI”, and “Reflecting on AI”.
Reflecting on AI, which is the subject on day 2 of the conference, includes conversations and talks that focus on the socio-political and cultural implications of AI.
Video
Reflecting on AI
Session introduction
Part 1: Questioning power structures and injustice through art and AI
Provocations by artists and scholars Hiba Ali, Lauren F.Klein, Mushon Zer-Aviv
Followed by conversation and audience Q&A
Chaired by Erinma Ochu, curator and Senior Lecturer, Digital Media & Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University
Break
Part 2: Through the AI lens
Talks by artists Joana Moll and Memo Akten
Followed by conversation and audience Q&A
Chaired by Prodromos Tsiavos, Head of Digital Development, Onassis Foundation
Weaponizing Creativity by Stop LAPD Spying Coalition with Bill Balaskas
A discussion with creatives on how they see the value of the arts in liberation movements, and specifically abolition. We’ll learn about their processes, challenges and what’s ahead for artists joining the fight for the future.#
Hiba Ali: Hiba Ali is a producer of moving images, sounds, couture, and words. They work on two long term art and publication projects: an art-based PhD project that examines womyn of colour’s labor, and architecture of surveillance as it exists within the monopoly of Amazon (corp.); and the Black Indian Ocean project which features the music, cloth, and ritual of African descent communities across the Indian Ocean region.
Bill Balaskas: Bill Balaskas is an artist, theorist, and educator, whose research is located at the intersection of contemporary politics, digital media, and visual culture. His works have been widely exhibited internationally, in museums, galleries, festivals and public spaces. Balaskas is an Associate Professor and Director of Research, Business and Innovation at the School of Art and Architecture of Kingston University, London.
Lauren F. Klein: Lauren F. Klein is an Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. Before moving to Emory, she taught in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. Klein works at the intersection of digital humanities, data science, and early American literature, with a research focus on issues of gender and race.
Mushon Zer-Aviv: Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, researcher, educator, and media activist based in Tel Aviv. His love/hate relationship with data informs his design work, art pieces, activism, research, teaching, workshops, and city life. Among Mushon’s collaborations, he is the Co-founder of Shual.com – a foxy design studio; and multiple government transparency and civic participation initiatives with the Public Knowledge Workshop. Mushon also designed the maps for Waze.com and led the design of Localize.city.
Erinma Ochu: Erinma Ochu is a neuroscientist and storyteller, experimenting how we collectively re-imagine and redesign how to live and thrive in a warming world. Working at the intersection of art, information design, and environmental science, her work seeks to craft new literacies and cultural forms. Erinma is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communications at the iSchool at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Joana Moll: Joana Moll is an artist and researcher based in Barcelona and Berlin. Her work critically explores the way techno-capitalist narratives affect the literacy of machines, humans and ecosystems. Her main research topics include internet materiality, surveillance, online tracking, social profiling, and interfaces. She has presented her work in renowned institutions, museums, universities and festivals around the world.
Memo Akten: Memo Akten is a computational artist, engineer, and computer scientist working with emerging technologies to create images, sounds, experimental films, large-scale responsive installations and performances. Fascinated by trying to understand the nature of nature and the human condition, he works in and draws inspiration from fields such as biological and AI, computational creativity, perception, consciousness, neuroscience, fundamental physics, ritual and religion.
Prodromos Tsiavos: Prodromos Tsiavos is the Head of Digital and Innovation at the Onassis Group and the director of Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation Institute (IPR-i) at the European Public Law Organisation. He serves as the president of the supervisory board of the European Patent Academy of the European Patent Office. He read law and Information Systems in Athens and London and holds a PhD in Law and Information Systems from the London School of Economics.
Stop LAPD Spying Coalition: Formed in 2011, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is led by community members from diverse backgrounds, including youth, formerly incarcerated people, academics, undocumented immigrants, unhoused people, artists, community groups, and many more. Their organizing model is centered in the stolen Tongva territory called Los Angeles, but with regional, national, and international implications.
Credits
Curated by Irini Mirena Papadimitriou (FutureEverything)
Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi
In the context of the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab network
Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union
