School of Digital Arts
29.06.2023
09.30 - 16.00
︎︎︎
2023 event
Storytelling in the age of AI symposium
Storytellers + Machines at the School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester Metropolitan University, considers the unstable relationships between AI generative media and the storytellers and artists that adopt them. Importantly the series links the growing storytelling cultures related to generative AI to critical and philosophical concerns and traditions by bringing together a diverse set of voices from the arts, industry and academia. The event is led by members of the Speculative Technologies Research Group in SODA, a group that seeks to engage through creative practice and theory with emerging media technologies.
EVA JÄGER
TIME: 10AM
︎Co Lead Creative AI Labs
︎Serpentine Gallery
︎London
Eva Jäger is Curator of Arts Technologies at Serpentine gallery in London. She is also part of the team working on Serpentine’s R&D Platform, specifically as co-Investigator of the Creative AI Lab (Serpentine R&D Platform and King’s College London). Eva commissions artists working with advanced technologies and is a collaborator in teams designing novel approaches, workflows and philosophies of emerging tech. During her time at Serpentine she has worked with artists Jenna Sutela, Hito Steyerl, Suzanne Treister, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Trust, 0rphan Drift, Kite, Keiken, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Libby Heaney, Gabriel Massan and dmstfctn.
INTRODUCED BY VALENTINO CATRICALA, MODAL GALLERY CURATOR, SODA
PANEL DISCUSSION 1:
TIME: 11.00
NEW TECHNOLOGIES,
NEW VOICES?
Our panel, made up of speakers from SODA alongside experts the arts and media, discusses the new voices using AI to tell stories differently through generative AI technologies. To what extent does it represent a diversification or consolidation of storyteller perspectives?
CHAIR: DEBBIE BANDARA, SODA
LOREM AKA FRANCESCO D’ABBRACIO, ARTIST
LOIS MACDONALD, AI MUSIC RESEARCHER, SODA
IRINI PAPADIMITRIOU, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, FUTURE EVERYTHING
DAVID JACKSON, AI RESEARCHER & LECTURER, SODA
MISCHKA HENNER
︎Visual Artist
︎(he/him)
My varied practice navigates through the digital terrain to focus on key subjects of cultural and geo-political interest. I’ve participated in shows at MoMA and The Met, NYC, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and SODA, Manchester. My works are in public collections including the Arts Council England Collection, The Met, NYC, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Bavarian State Library, and the University of Salford Art Collection, where I’m the Energy House 2.0 Artist-in-Residence until 2024.
In The Fertile Image (2020–Present), I use Generative Adversarial Networks to produce genealogies of visual descendants from parent images. With Influenzer (2022), I integrate these genealogies into the MyHeritage platform, subverting the site’s AI tools to animate and classify chimaeras from The Fertile Image.
IRINI PAPADIMITRIOU
︎ Creative Director
︎ Future Everything
︎ (she/her)
Irini Papadimitriou is a curator and currently Creative Director at FutureEverything in Manchester UK, and Artistic Director for the Sea Art Festival 2023 in Busan, Korea. She was previously Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A, and Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans. Recent curated exhibitions include: Artificially Intelligent at the V&A, You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens and Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data for Onassis Stegi in Athens, Money, Ruins, and the Sea for NeMe in Cyprus and [Digital] Transmissions in Amman, Jordan. Irini is a co-founder of Maker Assembly, a critical gathering about maker culture, and she has been a co-curator for the Arts & Culture experience at Mozilla Festival, including the 2019 exhibition Trustworthy AI: Imagining Better Machine Decision Making.
LOREM (FRANCESCO D’ABBRACCIO)
︎Musician, artist
︎Independent researcher
Lorem is a music-driven multidisciplinary practice by Italian musician, visual artist and independent researcher Francesco D’Abbraccio. Working with neural networks and artificial intelligence systems, Lorem produces sounds, visuals and texts.
Lorem’s work has been displayed (among others) at Ars Electronica, London Design Biennale, NXT Museum Amsterdam, Sheffield International Documentary Festival, Museo Triennale di Milano, HEK Basel, Transmediale Vorspiel, Fiber Festival, Design Museum, Liftoff Tokyo, RomaEuropa Festival.
GRAEME PHILLIPSON
︎Senior Research Engineer
︎BBC Research and Development
︎(he/him)
Graeme Phillipson is a researcher at BBC Research and Development looking at how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning methods can be applied to problems in media production, especially with regard to visual elements. Publications include topics such as computational cinematography, novel view synthesis, relighting, and analysing video content.
ALEX ESTORICK
︎Editor-in-Chief
︎Right Click Save
︎(he/him)
Alex Estorick is a media theorist who seeks to develop socially progressive approaches to new technologies. As Editor-in-Chief at Right Click Save, he aims to drive critical conversation about blockchain, NFTs, and Web3. He is also Contributing Editor for Art and Technology at Flash Art. Recent curatorial projects include The Pixel Generation at Unit London, Cure³ at Bonhams, FEMGEN at Art Basel Miami Beach, and Ecotone on Feral File. He contributes to various publications – from Frieze to the Financial Times – and was lead author of the first aesthetics of crypto art. He is also an International Selector for The Lumen Prize.