RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
Ellen PEARLMAN. AIBO – How To Build A ‘Sicko’ AI Using GPT-3
Jonah BRUCKER-COHEN. Deconstructing The Human Machine Relationship
Sean MONTGOMERY. EmotiBit, Transdisciplinary Biometric Sensing and Democratizing the Future of Augmented Cognition
Vincenzo SANSONE. Theatre and Artificial Intelligence: from robots to algorithms that perform on the stage. What is happening?
Ellen PEARLMAN. AIBO – How To Build A ‘Sicko’ AI Using GPT-3
Artificial Intelligent (AI) agents are exponentially increasing in power and sophistication. With the addition of OpenAI’s breakthrough new algorithm GPT-2 (now GPT-3) into the toolbox of developers, the ability to mimic human dialogue and produce fake, but believable interactions between humans and computer-based agents is fully upon us. In developing “AIBO” (Artificial Intelligent Brainwave Opera), an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligent brainwave opera, I created a biased, or ‘sicko’ AI as one of the two main characters. This has been created in response to one of my research questions, “Can an AI be fascist?” This paper explores the construction a ‘sicko’ or perverted AI for artistic use as part of the overall process of developing an AI brainwave opera.
Dr. Ellen Pearlman is a new media artist, critic, curator and writer who created Noor: A Brain Opera, the world’s first immersive interactive brain opera in a 360 degree theater. Ellen has a PhD from the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University, where her thesis was awarded Highest Honors Internationally by Leonardo LABS Abstracts. She is on the faculty of Parsons/New School University, and a Senior Researcher, Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia. A Fulbright World Learning Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology she is also an EU Vertigo STARTS Horizon 2020 Laureate, a Zero1 American Arts Incubator Fellow in Kyiv, Ukraine, and a contributing editor to Performance Arts Journal (PAJ) MIT Press. Ellen is also President of Art-A-Hack™ and Director and Curator of the New York Volumetric Society.
Jonah BRUCKER-COHEN. Deconstructing The Human Machine Relationship
This presentation will focus on several projects that bring to light implicit biases that are found in software systems meant to make our lives easier while also infringing on our beliefs and values. I will discuss a series of projects I have created within the theme of “Human Error” that examine all of the things we do “wrong” with technology and how we could integrate them into existing software and hardware systems to humanize these technologies further. I will also speak about two projects “To Protect and Server” and “Weapon of Protest” that aim to examine how mainstream technological software and hardware could be altered to interject a political conscience in order to shed light on how we as a society deal with social justice issues such as police brutality and gun violence. Finally I will bring to light other projects in this theme that aim to question our ability to generate a shared understanding and rectification of these issues at hand.
Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Ph.D., is an artist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Lehman College / CUNY in the Bronx. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on “Deconstructing Networks” with works that challenge and subvert accepted perceptions of network interaction. His artwork has been exhibited at venues such as SFMOMA, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMA, ICA London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Palais du Tokyo, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and more. His artworks, “Bumplist” and “America’s Got No Talent” are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has written for WIRED, Make, Gizmodo, Neural and more. His Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in over 15 countries in Europe, South America, North America, Asia, and Australia since 2003.
Link: http://www.coin-operated.com
Twitter: @coinop29
Sean MONTGOMERY. EmotiBit, Transdisciplinary Biometric Sensing and Democratizing the Future of Augmented Cognition
Electrical and chemical signals are constantly traveling throughout our brains and bodies, carrying sensations, thoughts, emotions and our reactions to the world around us. Sensing these signals and how they are altered by external stimuli and internal contexts gives us a window into ourselves and how we can enhance our health, well-being and capabilities in the 21st century. However, closed-source sensors combined with limited data access and black-box algorithms hampers efforts to understand the body and mind, stunts transdisciplinary cross-pollination, and opens the door to innumerable dystopian futures. After nearly 3 years of development and testing with partners around the world, my lab recently launched EmotiBit (https://www.EmotiBit.com/), a wearable open-source sensor platform for capturing emotional, physiological, and movement data. I’ll share examples of collaborations using EmotiBit, including a transnational and transdisciplinary project with Battery Dance Studio (NYC) and ThoughtWorks Art-A-Hack utilizing biometric data to reimagine dance performance in a post-pandemic world. I’ll discuss how a low-cost sensor can help democratize Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research, create more dialog between artistic and scientific inquiry, and enable more voices to participate in the conversation about a future in which internal context combined with artificial intelligence play a central role in augmenting human cognition.
Sean Montgomery is a technologist, educator and new-media artist working at the intersection of art, science and technology. Using research methodologies combined with emerging technologies, Sean takes a trans-disciplinary look at the human condition to examine the changing relationship between the physical and metaphysical world. From developing wearable bio-sensors and algorithms that derive meaning from sensor data to creating interactive new-media art installations that have shown around the world, Sean’s work focuses on how technology can enhance our understanding of ourselves and create new ways for people to interact with one another and the objects around them. His lab recently launched EmotiBit (https://www.EmotiBit.com/), a wearable open-source biometric sensor to make it easy for everyone from researchers and educators to artists and DIYers to begin working with high-quality biometric signals and generate greater transdisciplinary dialog about sensing and making sense out of biometrics data. Learn more about Sean’s work at http://produceconsumerobot.com/
Vincenzo SANSONE. Theatre and Artificial Intelligence: from robots to algorithms that perform on the stage. What is happening?
In 2019 Rimini Protokoll company presented Uncanny Valley on the theatre scene. It’s a performance in which the actor is a robot with human features so delineated as to cause a sense of uneasiness, the so-called uncanny valley effect. This performance is one of the latest results, perhaps the most evident, of the entrance of artificial intelligence to the theatre. Spectators can watch a performance performed entirely by a robot, as if Gordon Craig’s paradigm Über-marionette were somehow realised. In the history of theatre and new technologies, we can find several examples of robots on stage, but nowadays the issue must go beyond the simple use of automatons more or less similar to humans, substitutes for the actor. Today the concept of Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent in the theatre, a phenomenon in which the algorithm becomes an autonomous being, which performs at its own will on the stage not necessarily using robots. What is happening on the theatre stage? How is artificial intelligence modifying the stage? Through a path with examples, we will trace how and to what extent AI has been influencing the stage, trying to outline a hypothesis for the future.
Vincenzo Sansone, master’s degree in Digital Performance (Sapienza University of Rome), is PhD in Studi Culturali Europei/Europäische Kulturstudien (University of Palermo). He was visiting scholar at Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona and at Polytechnic University of Valencia. The focus of his research concerns these areas: the performing arts, new media, animation, AR technologies, software culture, visual culture. He is also an actor and digital set designer. In 2021 he published his first book Scenografia Digitale e Interattività. Il video projection mapping nuova macchina teatrale della visione (Aracne Editrice). Currently he is adjunct professor at the University of Milan and Brera Academy of Fine Arts.