AI has permeated most layers of society, which requires research to find new angles to understand it. We are currently deepening our understanding of how art can help us explore the societal impact of AI. Art has a central role in society as it functions, among other things, as a communicator to audiences. Art is central to understanding society as it functions, among other things, as a communicator to audiences. Through collaborations with local collectives of artistic researchers and artists, we are looking into bridging academia and artistic practice to make current issues more tangible.
To kick off this new focus area, we welcomed researchers from the ARIAS to our lab during a TuesdAI session. As a platform for collaborative research through scientific and artistic practices, they aim to nurture a diverse and sustainable research ecology among the institutions and organisations of education and knowledge in Amsterdam. Researchers from the Artificial Worlds working group presented their current projects, methods, and techniques to understand the different ways AI interacts with knowledge creation. After an introduction from researcher and coordinator Mariana Fernández Mora, Dorin Budușan and Sofía Fernández Blanco elaborated on a current project which bridges science with séance. It reimagines machine intelligence through symbolic and participatory practices, drawing from astrology and divination. They suggest that it is crucial to unlock possibilities for imagining different types of futures in a moment where the rapid advancement of technology has led to a crisis of imagination.
Two weeks later, we were happy to have interdisciplinary artist Julia Janssen at the lab. She works with creative methods to understand AI from various angles and recontextualise our relationship with data and AI. She presented her project Why :i:like green, a critical exploration into the opaque systems that categorise us by data. Scraping her own ad data from various sites she uses, Julia extracted the codes which seem to understand her in a way she does not even understand herself. Visualised on over 4000 ping pong balls that reflect hidden infrastructures, this intimate data is made tangible.
As we are in the early stages of exploring this intersection of art and research, we are curious about broadening our methodological approaches through artistic practices.
