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AI and the Arts: Who’s Responsible (Artist’s and Curatorial events)

January 18, 2024 - January 19, 2024

Five people sit on a stage, talking together in front of an audience.

Photo credit: Copyright George Torode 2024.

The AI and the Arts: Who’s Responsible – Artist’s and Curatorial events, happened on 18th and 19th January at the Science Gallery London, developed in partnership with FutureEverything. The events were undertaken as part of the UKRI AHRC BRAID Programme – Inspired Innovation theme, focusing on Responsible AI within the Creative Arts, to coincide with Science Gallery London’s exhibition ‘AI: Who’s Looking After You?’. This was the first in a series of UKRI BRAID Creative Community Engagement events intended to build upon existing networks and strengthen the AI and Arts ecosystem in the UK.

We had two days of excellent discussion with a dream line up of 21 speakers, presenters and provocateurs. Day one was a round table workshop bring together 50-ish artists, creatives and researchers, from across the UK Arts and AI ecosystem, focusing on concerns and potentials within Responsible AI and the Arts, covering issues such as IP, consent, bias and responsibility. Day two was a theatre style event attended by 100-ish people working in the arts sector including curators, producers, gallerists, funders and researchers, focusing on best practice, potentials and concerns around Responsible AI and the Arts. The event included curatorial case studies, practicalities and resources experiences, and thinking through the stories we tell within “what we see, show and tell, about whom, with what, and why” in relation to AI (Zylinska, 2020: 153).

Activities included lightning presentations, participatory tasks in small groups and an attempt to create a collective consensus statement representing the opinions of the speakers and attendees at the close of each day (which also allowed room for outlying opinion).

It was wonderful to have such an engaged audience of early, mid and established career practitioners, and a range of organisations from artist run to large-scale museums and commercial sector, alongside freelance curators, asking important questions about a wide range of issues around ethics, responsibility and AI for the arts. The attendees represented a wide geographic spread, with regional diversity across the UK, from Inverness to Brighton, Wales, Liverpool and Newcastle (where possible supported by the BRAID access fund).

Key discussions that emerged included:

  • the outdated concept of IP
  • imbalances, tensions and shifts in power between the arts, tech sector and other fields
  • how best to negotiate the ethics and practicalities of the arts when employed as a testing ground for the tech sector – what does working ethically together look like?
  • the artist as benevolent witness
  • solidarity over than competitiveness in the creative arts
  • the future of creative skills as discernment, judgement and curation
  • the need for a representation and diversity of voices within AI and the Arts, what this diversity looks like and where current power lies
  • the precarity of the arts, cultural institutions and funding
  • the need for pastoral care for artists, in addition to financial and skills support
  • the decades of practice already undertaken within the arts around Responsible AI
  • challenges for arts freelancers in attending, accessing and participating in research activities
  • how to best bridge the activities of the creative arts into impacting policy and innovation
  • the need for cross-collaboration from all nations across the UK
  • Access to tools, technology and the cultural sector itself

Documentation of the rich consensus statements created can be found below, accompanied by the fabulous illustrated notes created in-situ throughout the events, by illustrator Jonny Glover.

Thanks to Science Gallery London and FutureEverything, support and developing the event with the BRAID team, and to Data + Design Lab at Edinburgh Futures Institute for facilitating the event activities.

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List of Speakers:

(Day 1 – Artist’s event)
dmstfctn – artist duo
Reema Selhi – DACS artists’ rights management organisation
Martin Zeilinger – University of Abertay
Daniel Chavez Heras – Creative AI Lab/King’s College London
Yasmine Boudiaf – researcher and artist
Alan Warburton – artist, animator
Caroline Sinders – human rights researcher and artist

(Day 2 – Curatorial event)
Joanna Zylinska – Creative AI Lab/King’s College London
Luba Elliott – Independent Curator
Kay Watson – Serpentine Galleries
Hannah Redler Hawes –Open Data Institute
Imogen Hare – Gazelli Art House/gazell.io
Irini Mirena –FutureEverything
Sarah Cook – University of Glasgow
Jennifer Wong – Science Gallery London
Natalie Kane & Katherine Mitchell – V&A Museum
Donna Holford-Lovell – NEoN Digital Arts
Drew Hemment & Matjaz Vidmar – The New Real
Helena Geilinger – Somerset House Studios

Details

Start:
January 18, 2024
End:
January 19, 2024

Venue

Private: Science Gallery London
Great Maze Pond, SE1 9GU
London, SE1 9GU United Kingdom
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