2026
8-9 JULY 2026, SCHOOL OF DIGITAL ARTS
MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
CONFERENCE THEME:![]()
The cultural and creative disruption of the first two years of generative AI technology was captured by Storytellers + Machines 2024 performers, artists and academics. Now as an artistic and academic community we speculate on, imagine, or perhaps plot the end of A.I. and wonder what might come after.
Funded by:
PINAR YOLDAS
Keynote on 8th July 2026︎Award-winning artist and professor
︎University of California San Diego
Pinar Yoldas is a research-based artist and academic whose work focuses on the Anthropocene, futurism, and feminist technoscience.
Yoldas highlights the term "speculative biology" in comparison to experimental architecture of the 1990s, as design of tissues, organs, organisms, biological systems, ecotypes and ecosystems in order to catalyse creative critical thinking.
She brings with her the mesmerising Kitty A.I. (2016), which narrates its future role as governor of the world.
She is a Guggenheim fellow and a MacDowell Colony fellow.
MAY ABDALLA
Keynote on 9th July 2026︎Twice Emmy-nominated director and artist
︎Co-founder and director of award-winning Anagram
Twice Emmy-nominated director and artist May Abdalla creates groundbreaking work by merging physical experience, technology, and storytelling. Her projects deliver poetic insight into contemporary issues, leveraging documentary, game-design, and speculative fiction. In 2013, she co-founded the award-winning UK studio Anagram to pioneer user interactivity in non-fiction storytelling. Anagram's portfolio spans a vast range of forms, from Door Into The Dark—a blindfolded experience about what it means to be lost—to Messages to A Post Human Earth, a two person outdoor augmented reality journey about plant intelligence. The ongoing series Playing With Reality (co-directed with Barry Gene Murphy, featuring Tilda Swinton as Echo) utilizes immersive tech to explore first-person experiences of mental health conditions. This acclaimed work has earned two Venice Lions—the Grand Jury Award for Best VR and the Immersive Achievement Award in 2024—and is now a training tool for healthcare professionals across the NHS and international institutions. Their current project, Amorphous, playfully explores the edges of body perception and identity, employing AI, VR, and good old fashioned physical objects.