STORYTELLERS + MACHINES︎ 2024
2024
2-4 JULY 2024, SCHOOL OF DIGITAL ARTS, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
STORYTELLERS + MACHINES 2024
Storytellers + Machines 2024 is a transdisciplinary creative AI conference that champions the contributions of artists, creative practitioners and technologists, alongside other voices from academia, industry and cultural sectors in the lively and contested space.
︎SEE CONFERENCE PROGRAMME FOR FULL DETAILS (UPDATED 2 JULY)
JANET BIGGS
Wednesday 3rd July
︎Award-winning research-based interdisciplinary artist
︎New York, US
Janet Biggs is a research based, interdisciplinary artist known for her immersive work in video, film and performance. Biggs’ work focuses on individuals in extreme landscapes or situations, navigating the territory between art, science and technology. Her work has taken her into areas of conflict and to Mars (as a member of crews at the Mars Desert Research Station and Mars Academy USA). Biggs has worked with institutions from NOAA to NASA and CERN. She has collaborated with high energy nuclear physicists, neuroscientists, Arctic explorers, aerospace engineers, astrophysicists and a robot named Shimon.
Her work with AI includes “Voices of Inclusion: AI and Authenticity in the Spectrum of Care and Support” (pictured), a multi-discipline performance that was part of the First International Day of Care and Support at the United Nation Headquarters, New York City in 2023.
Biggs is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the 2018 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Visionary Woman Award, the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts Award, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the NEA Fellowship Award.
Ersin Han Ersin
Thursday 4th July
︎Marshmallow Laser Feast
︎Director and creative director
Ersin Han Ersin is an artist, director and creative director of London based experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast. Ersin’s art practice combines a wide range of disciplines including sculpture, installation, live performance, and mixed reality. His work illuminates the hidden natural forces that surround us, inviting participants to navigate with a sensory perception beyond their daily experience. In these spaces, the known physical world is removed to reveal networks, processes and systems that are at once sublime, underpinned by research, and fundamental to life on Earth.
Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an experiential art collective. Their work reinterprets the idea of human perception and experience, employing a wealth of creative disciplines and underpinned by research inviting participants to navigate with a sensory perception beyond the everyday. MLF has exhibited internationally from London to New York Melbourne to Seoul. Their works have been included in major exhibitions at institutions including ACMI Barbican Centre YCAM DDB Seoul Sundance Film Festival Quartier des Spectacles Montreal SXSW Phi Centre and Lisbon Architectural Triennale.