Art reflecting on Machine Learning

About

The event is part of the Creative AI meetup series designed to bring together artists, developers, designers, technologists and industry professionals to discuss the applications of artificial intelligence in the creative industries.

We will have the following two talks at this event:

Ros Lawler, Digital Director, Tate

"IK Prize 2016: Exploring Tate's collections with the help of AI"

Ros will talk about the Tate’s experience with the AI-themed IK Prize 2016 and the winning project Recognition by Fabrica. The 2016 IK Prize challenged digital creatives to use a form of artificial intelligence to allow the public to explore, investigate or ‘understand’ British art in the Tate collection in new ways. This presentation will explain the role of the IK prize, the reason behind selecting Fabrica’s concept as the winner, the production process and overall reception. Ros will also talk about the user experience considerations, audience reach and interaction.

Ros is an experienced digital professional with a track record of successfully leading and implementing digital strategy for world leading commercial and non-profit organisations. Her enviable employment record includes Channel 4, Ministry of Sound, Radio 1 and Random House. Ros has been Digital Director at Tate since 2015, where she has focused on reaching broader audiences by creating accessible and engaging experiences, both online and in the galleries. Under her lead the digital team have delivered a refresh of Tate’s website, making it mobile responsive with clear user journeys, the launch of the new Tate app to help visitors make the most of their time in the galleries and innovative new content formats including Facebook 360 films and interactive films.

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Katriona Beales, Artist, katrionabeales.com

"Intelligence is not enough - mindless minds & artificial stupidity"

Taking as a starting point Mireille Hildebrandt's notion of 'mindless minds' and Hito Steyerl's thoughts around 'artificial stupidity', Katriona will present critical reflections on machine bias and the algorithmic gaze in reference to her recent artwork CIPHER (2016). CIPHER was developed using a variant of Google's DeepDream to process 1934 footage of female acrobats performing for a professor of anatomy (from the Wellcome collection moving image library). CIPHER comes out of Katriona's ongoing research into internet addiction, information overload and ideas of a technological sublime.

Katriona Beales is a sculptor who also makes digital artefacts, moving image and installation, stressing the continuing role of the object in digital life. Her work responds to the experience of slipping between offine and online worlds, information overload, online behavioural addictions, experiences of the technological sublime and notions of a Digital Baroque. Katriona is currently working on a new body of work titled Are we all addicts now? developed with curator Vanessa Bartlett, artist and curator Fiona MacDonald and Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a clinical psychiatrist and specialist in online behavioural addictions. AWAAN? is an artist-led enquiry into digital hyper-connectivity and the normalisation of addictive behaviours through our intensive interactions with digital devices. This new body of work will form a major exhibition at Furtherfield Sept-Nov 17, supported by the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England. Katriona's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions and screenings in New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Linz. Katriona has an artist profile on Rhizome.org and her 2015 work 'White Matter' commissioned by FACT Liverpool (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) will be shown as part of Anxiety Festival in Sydney, Sept 2017