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European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, Ars Electronica

AI x Uncertainty

The AIxUncertainty panel focuses on the limitations and uncertainties artists face when developing their work in the frame of AI. What are the challenges for collaboration at the intersection of AI and the arts? What progress can be seen, and where is it failing? What problems do artists face? What frameworks must be created for artists to access their latest research? This panel will draw insights from leading experts in the field to critically discuss possible new developments and opportunities.

Moderation: Jurij Krpan (SL)
Speaker: Christl Baur (AT), Suzanne Livingston (UK), Špela Petrič (SL), Stephanie Dinkins (US)

AI x Ecology

Ars Electronica x Austrian Council for Robotics and AI

The panel on AIxEcology will focus on the importance of computer-controlled systems for ecology and the environment. Artificial intelligence can be used to save water, stop species loss or detect plants in the field. By optimizing the monitoring of ecosystems, a significant contribution can be made to reduce the risk of climate change and counteract it, as more and more projects try to fight it through data and artificial intelligence.

However, the enormous potential of AI also carries great responsibility, including ethical and social issues, but also security and control risks, as in, for instance, the question of how systems can be protected from unauthorized access.

Moderation: Martina Mara (AT)
Speakers: Carla Gomes (US/PT), Tega Brain (AU), Mark Coeckelbergh (BE), Lynn Kaack (DE), Stafano Nativi (IT), Claire Monteleoni (US)

The New Real: Experiental AI and the AI Lab

Ars Electronica x Edinburgh Futures Institute

The New Real explores the boundary between the real and the artificial as we attempt to emerge into and understand the so-called New Normal. Individual and collective resilience is predicated on the wider use of networked, online tools and environments by the majority of the population in a huge diversity of professional, domestic and leisure settings. At the same time, the crisis is unfolding in a context in which trust in data-driven online content and interaction are being challenged like never before.

The New Real is the theme of an artistic programme at Edinburgh International Festival by Edinburgh Futures Institute (newreal.cc) that takes on the vast sweep of these issues through the lens of two particular online artistic inquiries. A space for discussion and debate will be created in response to experiences of the pandemic.

Moderation: Drew Hemment (UK)
Speaker: Jake Elwes (UK), Caroline Sinders (US), Anna Ridler (UK), Mahir Yavuz (TR)

AIxDemocracy by IMPAKT: Radicalization by Design

Ars Electronica x IMPAKT

Social media platforms are feeding the raw material of youth culture directly into the nationalist populist insurgency that is currently sweeping through the planet. Evoking the fear of an existential enemy at the gates of Fortress Europe – or more often, an enemy within – this new political style is especially successful in the online culture wars. Radicalization by Design will discuss the question of whether our media are radicalizing us. In connecting us, are social media also tearing us apart? How do trolls, conspiracy theories, memes and fringe platforms impact politics today? The panel discusses issues of freedom of speech, extreme speech and deplatforming.

Speaker: Joanna Bryson (UK/DE), Bharath Ganesh (US/NL), Richard Rogers (UK/NL), Sahana Udupa (DE) will discuss issues of freedom of speech, of extreme speech and deplatforming.
Moderation: Arjon Dunnewind (NL) and Marc Tuters (CA/NL)

Biographies Speaker

AIxECOLOGY

Carla Gomes (US/PT)
Carla Gomes is the Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science and the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes received a Ph.D. in computer science in the area of artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. Her research area is Artificial Intelligence with a focus on large-scale constraint reasoning, optimization, and machine learning. Recently, Gomes has become deeply immersed in research on scientific discovery for a sustainable future and more generally in research in the new field of Computational Sustainability. Computational Sustainability aims to develop computational methods to help solve some of the key challenges concerning environmental, economic, and societal issues in order to help put us on a path towards a sustainable future. Gomes is the lead PI of an NSF Expeditions in Computing award Gomes has (co-)authored over 150 publications, which have appeared in venues spanning Nature, Science, and a variety of conferences and journals in AI and Computer Science, including five best paper awards. Her research group has been supported by over $50M in basic research funds. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Tega Brain (AU)
Tega Brain is an Australian-born artist and environmental engineer whose work examines issues of ecology, data systems and infrastructure. She has created wireless networks that respond to natural phenomena, systems for obfuscating fitness data, and an online smell-based dating service. She has recently exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guangzhou Triennial in Guangdong and the Transmediale Festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Tega is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Digital Media, New York University and she works on open source software projects with the Processing Foundation. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Data & Society, Eyebeam and the Australia Council for the Arts.

Mark Coeckelbergh (BE)
Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is a full Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Philosophy of Department of the University of Vienna and former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT). His expertise focuses on ethics and technology, in particular robotics and artificial intelligence. He is currently a member of various entities that support policy building in the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, such as the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the Austrian Council on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, and the Austrian Advisory Council on Automated Mobility. He is the author of 12 philosophy books and numerous articles, and is involved in several European research projects on robotics (e.g. INBOTS).

Lynn Kaack (DE)
Lynn Kaack is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Energy Politics Group at ETH Zürich, and a chair of the organization Climate Change AI. Her research applies methods from statistics and machine learning to inform climate mitigation policy across the energy sector. She obtained a PhD in Engineering and Public Policy and a Master’s in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University.

Stafano Nativi (IT)
is the Big Data Lead Scientist of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC). His present research activity deals with the Digital Transformation of our Society and AI. He coordinates the JRC AI&BD Community of Practice and is responsible of the AI Standardization task of the AI-Watch initiative of the EC. He is the JRC contact point with the ISO JTC1 –SC42 on AI. He is co-editor of the ‘AI section” of the “Remote Sensing” journal (MDPI) and associate editor of the “Big Earth Data” journal (T&F).

Claire Monteleoni (US)
Claire Monteleoni is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, which she joined in 2018, following positions at University of Paris-Saclay, CNRS, George Washington University, and Columbia University. She completed her PhD and Masters in Computer Science at MIT and was a postdoc at UC San Diego. She holds a Bachelor’s in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard. Her research on machine learning for the study of climate change helped launch the interdisciplinary field of Climate Informatics. In 2011, she co-founded the International Conference on Climate Informatics, which turns 10 years old in 2020, and has attracted climate scientists and data scientists from over 20 countries and 30 U.S. states. She gave an invited tutorial: Climate Change: Challenges for Machine Learning, at NeurIPS 2014.

Martina Mara (AT)
Martina Mara earned her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau with a dissertation on anthropomorphic machines. After having worked for non-university research institutions such as the Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Institute of Design Research Vienna for more than a decade, she became Professor of Robopsychology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in 2018. Her current research interests include psychological effects of simulated human-likeness and intention signaling of collaborative robots. Mara is a member of the Austrian Council for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (ACRAI), a board member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society, and a newspaper columnist. Among other awards, she received the Vienna Women’s Prize and the Futurezone Award in the “Women in Tech” category.

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THE NEW REAL: EXPERIENTAL AI AND THE AI LAB


Jake Elwes (UK)
Jake is an artist living and working in London. His recent works have looked at machine learning and artificial intelligence research, exploring the code, philosophy and ethics behind it. In his art Jake engages with both the history and tropes of fine art and the possibilities and consequences of digital technology. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), London in 2017.
Jake’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; TANK Museum, Shanghai; Today Art Museum, Beijing; CyFest, Venice; Edinburgh Futures Institute, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; New Contemporaries 2017, UK; Ars Electronica 2017, Austria; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; LABoral Centro, Spain; Nature Morte, Delhi, India and the Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), UK.

Drew Hemment (UK)
Dr Drew Hemment is an artist, designer and academic researcher. He is Chancellors Fellow at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. He leads the Experiential AI research theme, supporting artists and scientists to create accountable and responsible AI, and the GROW Observatory, a continental scale citizens’ observatory. Drew founded FutureEverything in 1995, and was Artistic Director for 23 years of the UK’s annual festival of digital culture.

Anna Ridler (UK)
Anna Ridler is an artist and researcher who lives and works in London. She is interested in working with collections of information or data, particularly self-generated data sets, to create new and unusual narratives in a variety of mediums and how new technologies, such as machine learning, can be in the creative process. Her work has been exhibited widely at cultural institutions worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Modern, the Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, HeK Basel, The Photographers’ Gallery, the ZKM Karlsruhe, and Ars Electronica.

Caroline Sinders (US)
Caroline Sinders is a critical designer and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of artificial intelligence, abuse, and politics in digital conversational spaces. She has worked with the United Nations, Amnesty International, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation and others. Sinders has held fellowships with the Harvard Kennedy School, the Mozilla Foundation, Pioneer Works, Eyebeam, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Sci Art Resonances program with the European Commission, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, LABoral, Wired, Slate, Quartz, the Channels Festival and others. Sinders holds a Masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Mahir Yavuz
Mahir is co-founder of Topos, a location intelligence startup and a researcher focused on AI and data driven systems. Prior to founding Topos, Mahir was the Director of Data Science and Visualization at R/GA. He worked on large scale data-driven products for Fortune 500 clients. He is the co-founder of NYCViz and has presented his pioneering work in data visualization and UX/UI internationally at a wide range of conferences. Mahir is currently adjunct professor at University of Pennsylvania.


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AI X HUMANITY

Adam Harvey (US/DE)
Adam Harvey (US/DE) is a researcher and artist based in Berlin focused on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance. He is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2010) and is currently a digital fellow at Weizenbaum Institut, a research fellow at Karlsruhe HfG, a future fellow with EYEBEAM’s Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future, and is the founder of the VFRAME computer vision project.

Nye Thomson (UK)
Thompson creates software systems to explore technology paradigms and underlying power dynamics of the machine gaze. Shows include Tate Modern, Barbican, V&A, ZKM Karlsruhe & Ars Electronica. Collections include V&A. Her 1st solo show, described by C4 News as “too shocking to broadcast” triggered an international government complaint. Her work features in BBC, CNN, the Guardian & Wired. She’s been called “the new Big Brother” (Vogue) & “a contemporary Jacques Cousteau” (Bob & Roberta Smith).

Victoria Vesna
Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts (North campus) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) (South campus). Although she was trained early on as a painter (Faculty of Fine arts, University of Belgrade, 1984), her curious mind took her on an exploratory path that resulted in work can be defined as experimental creative research residing between disciplines and technologies. With her installations she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation (PhD, CAiiA_STAR, University of Wales, 2000). Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students.


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AI X UNCERTAINTY

Christl Baur (DE/AT)
Christl Baur is Head of Ars Electronica Festival, researcher with an interdisciplinary background in art history, cultural management, and natural science. She is particularly interested in the conjunction of aesthetic and social practices that center on collaboration and experimentation and challenge dominant social, political, and economic protocols. Her research field encompasses topics such as video art, new media technologies, computer art, biotechnology and interactive art, and she works at the nexus of art & science.

Stephanie Dinkins (US)
Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist and professor at Stony Brook University where she holds the Kusama Endowed Chair in Art.
She creates platforms for dialog about artificial intelligence (AI) as it intersects race, gender, aging, and our future histories. She is particularly driven to work with communities of color to co-create more equitable, values grounded artificial intelligent ecosystems. Dinkins’ art practice employs lens-based practices, emerging technologies, and community engagement to confront questions of bias in AI, data sovereignty and social equity. Investigations into the contradictory histories, traditions, knowledge bases, and philosophies that form/in-form society at large underpin her thought and art production.
Dinkins earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1997 and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Studies Program. She exhibits and publicly advocates for inclusive AI internationally at a broad spectrum of community, private, and institutional venues – by design. Dinkins is Artist in Residence at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, 2019 Creative Capital Grantee as well as a 2018/19 Soros Equality Fellow, Data and Society Research Institute Fellow Past fellowships and residencies include Data and Society Research Institute Fellowship, Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works Tech Lab, NEW INC, Blue Mountain Center; The Laundromat Project; Santa Fe Art Institute and Art/Omi.
The New York Times featured Dinkins in its pages as an AI influencer. Apple Inc recognized Dinkins’ research and community-centered efforts by featuring her as a local hero in their “Behind the Mac” ad campaign (Brooklyn, NY edition). Wired, Art In America, Artsy, Art21, Hyperallergic, the BBC, Wilson Quarterly, and a host of popular podcasts have recently highlighted Dinkins’ art and ideas.

Jurij Krpan (SL)
In the year 1995, at the initiative of the Student Organisation of the University of Ljubljana he conceived the Kapelica Gallery – Gallery for Contemporary Investigative Arts, which he has been running since. As a senior curator and selector he has contributed to domestic and international festivals, the biggest international productions to date being the organization and artistic management of the Slovenian pavilion at the 50th Venice Bienale in 2003 and the conceptual gallery Cosinus BRX at the European Commission building in Brussels and the 5.th triennial of Contemporary Investigative Arts 2006 at Museum of Modern Art – Ljubljana. In September 2008 he curated the presentation of the Gallery Kapelica in the Featured Art Scene section of Ars Electronica in Linz, and in 2009 the survey of 80 years of avantgarde art in Slovenia. In 2014 he co-curate the Designing Life section for Biennial of product design in Ljubljana and co-curate the slovenian pavilion at Venice biennial for architecture. He was a juror at Prix Ars Electronica for the Hybrid Arts category in the year 2010, ’13, ’15, ‘16 and 2017. Since 2017 he is working on the sistemic sollutions for bringing artistic ideations into the process of innovation for more sustainable, safe, inclusive and ethical future. Jurij Krpan lectures about the artistic profile of the Kapelica Gallery in Slovenia as well as abroad.

Suzanna Livingston (UK)
Dr Suzanne Livingston was co-curator of the Barbican Centre’s “AI: More than Human” exhibition which ran from May to August last year, before beginning its international tour. She has spent her career researching and questioning the entwined relationship between humans, culture and technology and the philosophical consequences emerging from that. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, Suzanne has worked globally across sectors spanning technology, arts, museums, education and business. As Global Principal at Wolff Olins, Suzanne developed strategy and exhibitions internationally with museum organisations such as the V&A, Whitney, ICA Boston, Qatar Museums and Southbank Centre and also with technology companies including Sony Worldwide, Native Instruments, Playstation and Ericsson. Suzanne received her PhD in Philosophy from Warwick University and is a founding member of the influential Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). She now works independently and continues to write collaboratively on technology, belief systems, innovation and evolution.

Spela Petric (SI)
Špela Petrič is a Ljubljana and Amsterdam based new media artist who has been trained in the natural sciences and holds a PhD in biology. Her artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, and critically examines the limits of anthropocentrism via multi-species endeavours. She envisions artistic experiments that enact strange relations to reveal the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Her work revolves around the reconstruction and re-appropriation of scientific methodology in the context of cultural phenomena, while working towards an egalitarian and critical discourse between the professional and public spheres. Petrič received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria).

AI x Humanity

Ars Electronica x Amnesty International

Machines can accomplish repetitive tasks with absolute precision. With recent advances in artificial intelligence, they are also gaining the ability to learn, improve and make autonomous decisions, in order to fulfill that were previously thought to depend exclusively on human expertise, creativity and intuition. This means algorithms, artificial intelligence, machines and robotics hold potential that interrogates our current understanding of humanity. What challenges and opportunities does this entail? How can artificial intelligence be used to protect and increase human rights? What are the responsibilities of industry, research, politics and civil societies? In cooperation with Amnesty International, this panel will address precisely these questions and discuss them with experts.

Moderation: Victoria Vesna
Speaker: Rasha Abdul-Rahim, Adam Harvey (US/DE), Nye Thomson (UK)