https://storytellersandmachines.xyz Storytellers + Machines Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:34:18 +0000 https://storytellersandmachines.xyz en https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Header-bar-copy Tue, 19 May 2026 12:25:27 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Header-bar-copy STORYTELLERS + MACHINES︎ 2026︎ GET TICKETS&nbsp; https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Logo-and-video-bg-updated Fri, 26 Apr 2024 13:37:36 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Logo-and-video-bg-updated <img width="2249" height="543" width_o="2249" height_o="543" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ae4112003e12fb56c4076997eaf45fb1cc06886c1b5161775a6331e45563345d/sm_test.png" data-mid="210658440" border="0" data-scale="72" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ae4112003e12fb56c4076997eaf45fb1cc06886c1b5161775a6331e45563345d/sm_test.png" />2026 8-9 JULY 2026, SCHOOL OF DIGITAL ARTS MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY <img src="https://files.cargocollective.com/c1879966/SODA_MMU_LOGO_WHITE.png" alt="SODA, Manchester Met Uni" width="400" height="90" style="width:400px; height: 90px;"> https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/About-updated-copy Fri, 03 Oct 2025 21:12:15 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/About-updated-copy WATCH&nbsp;2026 CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Pinar-Yoldas Sun, 24 May 2026 15:15:31 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/Pinar-Yoldas KEYNOTE 1: PINAR YOLDASKeynote on 8th July 2026 ︎Award-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.&nbsp; She brings with her the mesmerising Kitty A.I. (2016), which narrates its future role as governor of the world.&nbsp; She is a Guggenheim fellow and a MacDowell Colony fellow. https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/May-Abdalla Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:23:37 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/May-Abdalla KEYNOTE 2: MAY ABDALLAKeynote on 9th July 2026 ︎Twice 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. https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/SCHEDULE-2026 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:34:18 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/SCHEDULE-2026 <img width="250" height="250" width_o="250" height_o="250" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" data-mid="249110149" border="0" data-scale="8" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/250/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" /> Location: Sessions take place on Level 4 of Lowry Building at Manchester Metropolitan University, unless otherwise stated.&nbsp; SCHEDULE - DAY 1 WEDNESDAY 8 JULY 9:00Reception: tea, coffee and networking Served on Level 4 lobby and terrace of Lowry Building. 9:30Welcome and introductions.The Storytellers + Machines team welcome you to the Manchester Metropolitan University campus and run through the events of the day. 10:00Keynote: Pinar Yoldas, award-winning US-Turkish artist and researcher 11:30Panel 1: Zeitgeist 13:00Lunch.A light lunch with hot and cold drinks will be served. 14:00Panel 2: Ecological Burnout. 15:30–16:30Artists and work discussions.A chance to see the artworks, installations and films shared by speakers and discuss the themes, ideas and aesthetics driving the work. 16:30–18:00Book reading and Q&amp;A: Listening In.Prof. Toby Heys (SODA &amp; AUDINT), David Jackson (SODA) and Marsha Courneya (Birkbeck, University of London) read from their recently published book Listening In: From Acoustic Surveillance to Artificial Intelligence. Chaired by Paul Rekret (University of Westminster). Break From 19:00 Evening performances at The Deaf Institute. 22:00 close. <img width="250" height="250" width_o="250" height_o="250" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" data-mid="249110149" border="0" data-scale="8" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/250/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" /> SCHEDULE - DAY 2THURSDAY 9 JULY 8:30Reception: tea, coffee and networking.Served on Level 4 of the Benzie Building (Lobby and Terrace). 9:15Welcome back and introduction to Day 2.Introduction to Day 2 activities; delegate AI findings so far. 9:45Panel 3: Artistic Limits. 11:15Panel 4: Community Rejection. 12:45Lunch.A light lunch with hot and cold drinks will be served. 13:30Panel 5: Possible Futures (with n-Space, Somerset House Studios). 15:00Keynote: May Abdalla, BAFTA-award-winning director and co-founder of ANAGRAM. 16:30–16:50Closing remarks, special mentions and thanks..&nbsp; <img width="250" height="250" width_o="250" height_o="250" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" data-mid="249110149" border="0" data-scale="8" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/250/i/d493e6bc45655a274b25aa81314299062eb5daba89348e6aef40b3ea2e39a37a/small_cross.png" /> https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/n-Space-fellows Sun, 24 May 2026 15:29:08 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/n-Space-fellows INVITED PANEL POSSIBLE FUTURESn-Space fellows n-Space is a new space at Somerset House Studios for interdisciplinary experimentation across art and technology. The first n-Space fellowship explores questions of governance in human and more-than-human collaboration, bringing together artists, technologists and academics to generate novel insights and interventions in emerging sociotechnical systems. In this session, n-Space fellows Agnes Cameron, Hannah Cobb, dmstfctn, Ed Fornieles, Leela Jadhav, in conversation with n-Space curator Linda Rocco and CCI Course Leader Murad Khan discuss how futures become monopolised by corporate-state power. Through screening fragments of Trial Trial – a mock court hearing staged by the n-Space fellows and a team of legal professionals in April, in which a fictional defence tech company was put on trial for war crimes – and reflecting on the ongoing arms industry transparency wikithons, fellows examine how individuals and companies might be held accountable when accelerated, autonomous decision-making systems lead to civilian deaths. By tracing how particular governance configurations come to appear unavoidable, this intervention asks: what stories do machines tell about collective futures, and what mechanisms – legal, collaborative, narrative – can return the seemingly inevitable to the space of moral contestation? https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/loss-of-zeitgeist Wed, 31 May 2023 06:28:47 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/loss-of-zeitgeist SELECTED PANELLISTS DISCUSSION (LOSS OF) ZEITGEIST As generative technology begins to find its place in the digital ecosystem, will it become indistinct as a phenomenon? How does cultural production change as A.I. becomes an unremarkable part of our creative lives? What happens to political media in a sea of easy-to-make easy-to-forget media?&nbsp; Can we get back to the creative edge with playful procedural forms of generation? And how should we understand authorship in its wake?CHAIR: ALASDAIR SWENSON, SODA Ricardo Barker Leeds Trinity University Marcus Round, London-based artist Scott Pratt, Meta Fusion Labs Marsha Courneya Birkbeck, University of LonDON https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/ARTISTIC-LIMITS Mon, 25 May 2026 23:40:07 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/ARTISTIC-LIMITS SELECTED PANELLIST DISCUSSION ARTISTIC LIMITS? Mass adoption of creative AI has been driven by efficiency and scale, but does that mean it is producing more or better art? To gain an understanding, we might need to adopt new forms of storytelling and productions, and rethink models of authorship, looking beyond the individual genius to a more inclusive kind of ownership and a more pluralistic notion of our history. Do we still privilege the human creator – are our errors generative in a way machine hallucination is not? Or are these errors the true expressive power of the machine in an artist's hands? Perhaps the limit is the point – the place where the interesting work begins.CHAIR: LOIS MACDONALD Jason Hockman, SODA Mishka Henner, artist Rachel Genn, Manchester Metropolitan University Sue Fox, SODA &amp; David Mitchell, Incunabula Books https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/ECOLOGICAL-BURNOUT Mon, 25 May 2026 22:59:10 +0000 Storytellers + Machines https://storytellersandmachines.xyz/ECOLOGICAL-BURNOUT SELECTED PANELLIST DISCUSSION ECOLOGICAL BURNOUT Increasingly, A.I. infrastructure contributes to ecological crises. Will or has creative A.I. in its current form become unsustainable or unacceptable as a form of practice? Are there ethical options for companies in media industries like games? Can we use the principles of meaning making, but not the harmful technologies of AI in our work? Or perhaps we should think more like natural networks, embracing a slower, more planetary pace to adopting AI tools? CHAIR: DR Chloe Wake, Manchester Games Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University Henry Cooke, Creative technologies consultant Andrew Elliott, University of Glasgow, Daniel Jones,&nbsp;Jones/Bulley STUDIO, LONDON Griffith Rees, MANCHESTER-BASED ArtistGRAEME PHILLIPSON &amp; HELL RAYMOND-HAYLING, BBC R&amp;D Sophy King and John-Paul Brown, ARTISTS / GUARDIANS OF LIVING MATTER&nbsp;