A showcase of work from Edinburgh Futures Institute’s The New Real group – immerse yourself in The New Real and experience ground-breaking ideas for the arts and culture of tomorrow!
Join us on a trip to The New Real, as we look at how Artificial Intelligence interacts with people and the planet in fascinating and unanticipated ways, becoming a creative, playful and deep part of new artistic works and our everyday lives. Responding to EFI’s First Breath programme theme, discover how Art and Artificial Intelligence combine to fuel delightful new cultural experiences and help heal our planet in crisis.
Hear from leading international AI artists, designers and scientists how art and creativity can help to radically change how we think about AI design, to embrace human traits such as bias, disagreement, and uncertainty as a signal with creative potential rather than noise that needs to be removed. Gain insight into how our work is addressing the urgent need to tackle both energy intensive technologies and the disconnect between global climate information and people’s daily lives.
Following a Salon evening event, throughout the weekend an open Showcase exhibition explores the concept of ‘The New Real’, and the inflection that culture and society have gone through following the digital turn after Covid.
The New Real Salon Opening
28 October 19.00-21.00
Part of EFI’s inaugural event season, The New Real Gala will present international projects and practitioners, alongside highlights of our most recent research partnerships with artists and festivals. Leading contemporary AI artists, designers and scientists will explore the most transformative technologies out there and announce a major new programme on Next Generation Intelligent Experiences.
The New Real programme is a unique hub for AI, creativity and futures research. We believe the arts can be at the forefront of new sustainable industries and economies, and devise imaginative ways to experiment with new experiences, practices, infrastructures and business models, and to empower people to be agents of positive change.
As part of the New Real Salon Opening Event, researcher and artist Gershon Dublon, will present and perform The Wandering Mind an AI-powered performance platform for shaping dreams with the sounds of our world. Guided by the performer to sample tiny fragments of sound from tens of thousands of field recordings found online, the system generates a winding sound journey for sleeping and meditating audiences. In their curated performances, group naps and guided mind-wanderings, dream guides convene collective actions of sleeping together.
Lex Fefegha will also present an interactive research project that visualises what Londoners might lose and what will remain in a future where heavy rainfall will lead to flooding on the Thames Path in 2040. Lex will be speaking about the importance of the Thames Path 2040 project, taking you through his process, the challenges faced and the current results of the work in progress.
Please note that this event will be recorded and the data used for research and promotional purposes. We will ask you for your written consent and on arrival at the event
This Gala event is free but ticketed. Capacity is limited so please book a ticket to secure your place.
Speakers
Prof Drew Hemment is The New Real’s project principal investigator. He is an artist, designer and academic researcher, Chancellors Fellow at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art and Research Fellow at The Turing. Drew is an artist, designer and academic researcher, who over 25 years has been one of the key figures who has shaped the field of digital art and culture. He is Professor of Data Arts and Society, Chancellors Fellow and Director of Festival Futures at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art within University of Edinburgh.
Gershon Dublon is a researcher and artist whose work locates sites and means of connection between human perception and machine sensing. By day, Dublon is a Senior Researcher at Sonos, focusing on applications of multimodal sensing to immersive audio. Dublon has published articles in Presence (MIT Press), Scientific American, IEEE Sensors, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Body Sensor Networks, ICML, and others, and recently contributed to Swamps and the New Imagination. Their projects have been shown at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico’s National Center for the Arts, Ars Electronica, Future Everything, and Sundance Film Festival.
Lex Fefegha spends most of his time leading a small team of designers and coders at COMUZI, a London based design studio creating future-positive products, services and experiences for governments, organisations and charities. In his spare time, Lex has been exploring AI & creativity projects, working with Google AI & Google & Arts Culture Lab to create The Hip Hop Poetry Bot, an AI research project, exploring speech generation trained on rap and hip hop lyrics by black artists.
Contributing Speakers
Dr Matjaz Vidmar is The New Real’s co investigator, an interdisciplinary researcher, lecturer and strategist at the University of Edinburgh. He is an (Astro)Physicist by training, now examining innovation processes and (inter-)organisational learning and change, as well as other social dimensions of emerging technologies
Chris Speed is EFI’s Director of Innovation and Chair of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Chris’s research focuses upon the Network Society, Digital Art and Technology, and The Internet of Things. He has sustained a critical enquiry into how network technology can engage with the fields of art, design and social experience through a variety of international digital art exhibitions, funded research projects, books journals and conferences.
Event chair
Caroline Sinders is a machine-learning-design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of technology’s impact in society, interface design, artificial intelligence, abuse, and politics in digital, conversational spaces.
The New Real Showcase
29-30th Oct – 11.00-16.00 (drop in, no ticket required)
The New Real Showcase presents a suite of artworks and interactive exhibits from The New Real making the Artificial Intelligence systems more legible, transparent, fair, and environmentally sound through arts and design.
This Showcase comprises The New Real Observatory Platform, co-created by a team of scientists, artists, engineers and designers; and new horizons for creative machine learning tools and next generation intelligent experiences.
The New Real Observatory platform is combining machine learning processing engines with localised global climate data models.
Powered by its conceptual architecture, three artworks have been developed by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Kizziah McNeill, which investigate the entanglements of people, data, machines and environments.
The works are accompanied by interactive exhibits which engage audiences with research on future applications of AI in the creative sector as well as the border societal questions and implications of the future of emerging technologies.
Come along to be delighted and inspired by transformative ideas and creative insights into the intersection of art and AI.
Please note that the exhibition will be accompanied by opportunities to contribute to the research. We will ask you for your consent prior to any contributions you make being used as part of the research. Please speak to our research team should you have any questions
Artists
Inés Cámara Leret works across London and Madrid, and explores life through that which is unseen, portrayed as static or seemingly ephemeral. Her work spans across disciplines, nurturing long-term collaborations and creating expanded networks of knowledge bridging a range of methodologies. More information on the artwork and the artist here.
Keziah McNeill is an artist based in Scotland exploring new forms of photographic practice, remixing this analogue medium to respond to the digital age. Her work creates circuits of personalisation within the photographic process, employing structural and sonic adjustments to fabricate new darkroom personas. More information on the artwork and the artist here.
The New Real
Established in 2019, The New Real is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Alan Turing
Institute, and Edinburgh’s Festivals. It is hosted by Edinburgh Futures Institute and funded by UK Research and Innovation, Scottish Funding Council, Creative Scotland, and the Data Driven Innovation Programme.