– Recording of the EMAP Capacity Building Workshop by M-Cult 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the creative landscape. This technological leap challenges traditional notions of authorship, raising questions about the artist’s role in the creation process. The online workshop Authorship in AI-Generated Art, aims to explore this complex and emerging issue with our guest speakers introduced below. We now invite artists, scholars, legal experts, and technologists to engage in this discussion on the implications of AI in the world of media art. 

Key topics of the workshop addressed the challenges and possibilities of prompt-based visual creation and the ethical considerations of AI in art, including concerns over originality and intellectual property rights.Workshop was programmed by M-Cult’s producer and EMAP residency coordinator Mia Mäkelä.  

Programme:

Pioneering AI artist-philosopher Boris Eldagsen and Austrian-Finnish artist-researcher duo Kairus will engage in a deep reflection on the issues artists dealing with digital material are facing in creative, ethical and legal processes with AI tools.

Dive into the inspiring presentations of our guest speakers from the video above! 

The 30-minute presentations were followed by a discussion between the artists and the zoom audience, moderated by Mia Mäkelä.

Ideal Behaviour is realised within the European Media Art Platform’s 2024 residency programme and hosted by M-Cult in Helsinki.

Elevate Festival 2023 >> NETZPOLITISCHER ABEND from Elevate Festival on Vimeo.

Since 2015, the Netpolitical Evening has been addressing currently relevant net policy topics, creating awareness for future technological and social developments and presenting them in an entertaining way. The audience can contribute with questions and comments and then discuss further with the speakers in a relaxed atmosphere.

Through the initiative of Spektral (https://spektral.at), epicenter.works (https://epicenter.works) and mur.at (https://mur.at), the netpolitical evening will take place in Graz for the second time as part of the ELEVATE.

Talks & Speakers:

Daniel Lohninger (epicenter.works) ›› “Digital self-defence – The vision of the educational project of the NGO epicenter.works”
The NGO epicenter.works, which campaigns for fundamental and civil rights, has launched an education project. Within a year, OER (Open Educational Resources) educational materials were created in the form of web-based e-learning, a train-the-trainers programme was set up, trainers were trained and a range of workshops were developed to reach target group students at vocational schools. How this is already usable for many and what the vision behind it is, is what will be presented here.

Johanna Pirker (TU Graz) ›› “Equitable and Fair Digitalisation”
New (or old) technologies such as virtual reality experiences, virtual worlds, Metaverse concepts and also video games offer many possibilities but also potential difficulties. In this talk, Johanna Pirker wants to encourage reflection on various topics.

Stefan Auer (ACIPSS) ›› “Disinformation Worlds – On the end of divided truths”
The complex interplay of technological developments, political decisions and social changes in recent decades has massively altered our perception of the world as conveyed by the media. Our media spaces are characterised by attention struggles, information overload, misinformation, disinformation campaigns, an increasingly emotionalised & moralised debate culture and buzzwords such as propaganda, fake news, “Lying press” and framing. We are currently experiencing the break-up of our common space of discourse, the existence of which is indispensable for the survival of liberal democracies.
How could it come to this? What are the fundamental technological, social and also evolutionary-biological causes behind this, some of which are often
overlooked? What are the uncomfortable truths we must face when analysing the status quo and the possible future? What can the politically mature individual do to strengthen his intellectual self-defence and thereby continue to be able to distinguish between facts, lies & opinions?

KairUs (Linda Kronman und Andreas Zingerle) ›› “Sorting Data – artistic approaches to datasets and archives”
In their talk artist duo KairUs present a selection of projects which involved working artistically with different datasets by: presenting critical insights on working with found footage recovered of hard drives from e-waste dumps in Ghana, addressing how an archive of fraudulent webpages became an artwork, and discussing artistic research which required a deep dive into the annotation practices of machine learning datasets. By shifting between approaches – recovering, visualizing, and annotating data – this talk reflects upon how creating artworks have informed their take on data and how they engage with datasets and archives

Moderation: Reni Hofmüller (esc medien kunst labor)
Reni Hofmüller focuses on art in technological contexts and looks into relations between art, technology and society. She will lead through this evening in her inimitable way.

broadcasted live on the free radio station: Radio Helsinki Graz

Foto: BMKÖS_HBF_Trippold

Foto: BMKÖS_Haslinger

Jury statement:
KairUs ist ein Kollektiv der beiden Medienkünstler:innen Linda Kronman (Finnland) und Andreas Zingerle (Österreich). Ihr gemeinsames Werk beschäftigt sich auf intelligente und ästhetisch höchst elaborierte Weise mit den aktuellen Themen der Datensicherheit, der Datenethik, des Aktivismus, der Hackerkultur und des Recycelns von elektronischen Ressourcen. Diese in sich sehr komplexen Themenkreise transformieren sie auf anspruchsvolle Weise in Medieninstallationen und Medienpräsentationen, um Besucher:innen diese höchst virulenten Problematiken näher zu bringen. Kombiniert wird die künstlerische Arbeit auch mit fundierten akademische Recherchen und Publikationen, die die eigene Arbeit und den gesamten künstlerisch/wissenschaftlichen Kontext reflektieren und aufbereiten. 2017 gewannen sie mit ihrer Installation “Megacorp” den Stuttgarter Filmwinter Network Culture Award.

Foto: Christa Sommerer

“Die Outstanding Artist Awards sind ein wichtiges Signal für die heimische Gegenwartskunst. Die Preisträger:innen stehen einerseits für die Vielfalt und Breite des aktuellen Kunstgeschehens, andererseits spiegeln die ausgezeichneten Leistungen innovative, aktuelle Strömungen wider.
Die Ausgezeichneten zeigen: Kunst birgt die Kraft, eine Gesellschaft neue Perspektiven einnehmen zu lassen und Veränderungen herbeizuführen. Ich gratuliere allen Gewinner:innen zum Outstanding Artist Award 2022″, so Kunst- und Kulturstaatssekretärin Andrea Mayer. (Source: BMKÖS Website)

Video by Philip Aschauer / Produktionsraum.at

Jury statement:
KairUs is a collective of two media artists, Linda Kronman (Finland) and Andreas Zingerle (Austria). Their joint work deals in an intelligent and aesthetically highly elaborate way with the current issues of data security, data ethics, activism, hacker culture and the recycling of electronic resources. They transform these very complex topics in a sophisticated way into media installations and media presentations in order to bring visitors closer to these highly virulent issues. The artistic work is also combined with well-founded academic research and publications that reflect and process their own work and the entire artistic/scientific context. In 2017, they won the Stuttgart Filmwinter Network Culture Award with their installation “Megacorp”.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Links:

• https://www.bmkoes.gv.at/Kunst-und-Kultur/Neuigkeiten/Outstanding-Artist-Awards-2022.html

Wenn du eine zentrale Anlaufstelle suchst, ist immediate-edges.de ein guter Start für den Überblick.

Presse:

• https://www.musicaustria.at/oesterreichische-kunstpreise-und-outstanding-artist-awards-2022-vergeben/
• https://www.derstandard.at/consent/tcf/story/2000139566626/outstanding-artist-awards-2022-an-zehn-kuenstler-und-vier-kollektive
• https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20230120_OTS0073/bmkoesmayer-oesterreichische-kunstpreise-und-outstanding-artist-awards-2022-vergeben
• https://www.artmagazine.cc/content122006.html
• https://www.meinbezirk.at/c-leute/die-gewinner-des-oesterreichischen-kunstpreises-2022_a5826010#gallery=null
• https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21469:kulturministerium-oesterreich-outstanding-artist-awards-2022&catid=126&Itemid=100890

n recent years, the words ‘code’ and ‘algorithms’ appear in many newscasts and conversations around us. Algorithms make decisions, and we take for granted the increasing role they play in many aspects of our lives while failing to understand their nature and implications. In a world organised on the basis of measurements and calculations, in which our lives can be reduced to comparable and standardised patterns, how can we ensure that the human being, with their human capabilities, continues to be at the heart of decision-making?

The exhibition ‘Codes and algorithms. Wisdom in a calculated world’, curated by Manuela Naveau, curator and professor for Interface Cultures/Critical Data at the University of Arts and Design Linz, in collaboration with other experts in the field of computer science, seeks to make sense of this phenomenon and it’s implications by generating questions and knowledge that invite reflection and debate. Can algorithms ensure greater neutrality and efficiency? Are they as free from human bias as we usually think? Why do we humans trust the decisions made by machines over other humans?

https://espacio.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/evento/codes-and-algorithms-wisdom-in-a-calculated-world/

https://www.fundaciontelefonica.com/exposiciones/codigo-algoritmos-sentido-mundo-calculado-madrid/

Participating artists:

Karin Sander, Kyriaki Goni, Clara Boj y Diego Díaz, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Matthias Pitscher y Giacomo Piazzi, Iosune Sarasate, Trevor Paglen, Kairus Art+Research, Shinseungback Kimyonghun, Manu Luksch, Danja Vasiliev, Egor Kraft, Grow Your Own Cloud (GYOC)

. Sentido en un mundo calculado. Espacio Fundación Telefónica, 2022.

The 13^th edition of the Speculum Artium 2021 new-media festival intertwines past realizations with current events and visions of a distant future. This year, the festival outgrew itself and is undergoing a transformation in regard to its content and representation. The festival program, intended for laymen and the professionals alike, focuses on five basic topics: art, technology, science, economy and tourism – all of which have served as a foundation to our work ever since the beginning. It is our aim to intertwine and interconnect them even more in the future.
In the past few years, the Revolution of digitalization and the proliferation of online and digital content in all sectors and in all areas of activity have brought together civil society, academia, the public sector and the economy. The Speculum Artium Festival also reflects these changes and connections and tries to incorporate them into the vision of Delavski dom Trbovlje.
The festival program consists of five thematic sets. Under the spotlight this year we find the Senster, the oldest cybernetic, computer-controlled sculpture which dates back to 1970, and can be placed into the artistic and historical context of the first beginnings of intermedia and contemporary art. Along with Senster, the first thematic set also includes works of art selected in a public contest. The second set is a collection of works from the student competition program, while the third presents projects designed under the brand “Made in Trbovlje” and includes a presentation of activities carried out within the project RUK – Network of Art and Cultural Research Centers, as well as some other local projects.The independent set comprises the 11^th edition of DigitalBigScreen, an international festival of video art which, in addition to the videos selected in a public contest, also includes several other artistic VR projects. The extensive accompanying program features concerts, performances, workshops for children and youth, talks and guided tours of the exhibition, while the online part of the program further enriches the festival events.

blog post image by Mario Klingemann

The persuasive aesthetics and rhetorics of “smartness” presents a vision of a future in which humans and machines merge seamlessly into an “intelligence of everything”. The collective intelligence that “smartness” relies on draws upon data collected from populations. Hence, the ideal smart citizen turns into sensing nodes of our urban environments.

Our four panelists discuss alternatives to these dominant narratives of “smartness” by embracing the “beautiful seams” of the seamless ideal of today’s ubiquitous computing. They bring forth examples of citizen, artist and design initiatives, which make us aware and enable us to understand what actually happens in the networked surrounding of our devices, homes and cities.

Video stream will be available here after May 25, 2020.

Panelists:
Anuradha Reddy is a PhD candidate in Interaction Design at Malmö University, Sweden. Her research tackles matters of ethics and responsibility in IoT at the most intimate level, where we are currently experiencing a clash between data-driven logics, the messiness and material needs of everyday life, and societal values at large. Grounded in feminist ethics, her work attempts to show how a feminist approach can pave the way for a total re-orientation of how IoT should be developed and used. Anuradha has an interdisciplinary background in Engineering and Design that combines her ability to prototype and experiment with novel design methods.
Twitter: @anu1905
Website: http://anuradhareddy.com/

Bastien Kerspern is an interaction designer specialised in public innovation. He believes in innovation by transgression with a huge dose of cultural jamming inherited from digital subcultures. With a strong experience on designing participatory experiences, he pushes experiments in public debates and design for controversies. Interested in mundane frictions and uncanny narratives, his current works explore how digital technologies and related innovations might influence social models. Bastien also carries a discrete, but stubborn, passion for experimenting with interactive writing processes. Aside Design Friction, Bastien is also an associate designer at Casus Ludi and a visiting lecturer on the topics of design fiction and games for futures (L’École de Design Nantes Atlantique, Umea Institute of Design, AHO Oslo).
Twitter: @Kastien
Website: http://design-friction.com/

Özgün Eylül İşcen is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Program of Computational Media, Arts and Cultures at Duke University, United States. Her dissertation examines the current applications of computational media within the context of the Middle East, thereby underlining wider flows of technology, culture, and capital. She has a background in media, film and soundscape studies. She has presented her work at multiple academic and art institutions, as well as published in a variety of edited book volumes, academic journals, and art catalogs. She received her BA in Sociology from Koç University, Turkey, and MA in Interactive Arts and Technology from Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Website: https://cmac.duke.edu/people/ozgun-eylul-iscen

with:  Anuradha Reddy, Bastien Kerspern (Design Friction), Özgün Eylül İşcen, Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle (Kairus Art+Research).

There is limited space available for the workshop! Please sign-up!

COVID-19 forces most countries worldwide into various stages of lockdown. The ‘state of exception’ reveals various pre-existing conditions of nations level of preparedness as we are witnessing a global experiment in comparative governance. Large-scale testing has turned into a sensor informing statistically valid models for better public health response. Technology such as corona tracing apps promise a quicker return to the “new normal” and the race to develop a universal vaccination is assumed to be the only path to conquer this and future pandemics. These narratives portray innovation and technology as a savior in a similar way as “smartness” has been promised to solve challenges such as climate change, over population, financial crisis, security threats etc. In the midst of a pandemic it has become challenging to think about the future. “Coronarratives” shift as new research gets published, necessary preventive measures change overnight. The feeling of uncertainty fuels adversarial narratives. The most extreme corona conspiracy theories have led to burning of 5G towers. Reflexively interpreting sensing and modelling as ‘surveillance’, active governance as ‘social control’ and the current lock-downs as ‘dystopias’ seems short-sighted and calls for a more nuanced vocabulary. In this workshop we want to take time, space and (privileged) right to think about the future. When the earlier imagined futures of “smartness” producing resilience seem to be failing we like to share experiences and discuss local community responses and alternative  ad-hoc networks that emerge within our newly defined living spaces in our countries, cities, neighbourhood and households.

Please signup for the workshop at radical-openness.org

In your email please share your thoughts and observations on one or more of the following topics (max. 200 words):

• sensing, tracing and modelling the pandemic
• active governance, social control
• utopia/dystopia of current lock-downs
• local community responses
• alternative ad-hoc networks

Bio:

Anuradha Reddy is a PhD candidate in Interaction Design at Malmö University, Sweden. Her research tackles matters of ethics and responsibility in IoT at the most intimate level, where we are currently experiencing a clash between data-driven logics, the messiness and material needs of everyday life, and societal values at large. Grounded in feminist ethics, her work attempts to show how a feminist approach can pave the way for a total re-orientation of how IoT should be developed and used. Anuradha has an interdisciplinary background in Engineering and Design that combines her ability to prototype and experiment with novel design methods.

Twitter: @anu1905

Website: http://anuradhareddy.com/

Bastien Kerspern is an interaction designer specialised in public innovation. He believes in innovation by transgression with a huge dose of cultural jamming inherited from digital subcultures. With a strong experience on designing participatory experiences, he pushes experiments in public debates and design for controversies. Interested in mundane frictions and uncanny narratives, his current works explore how digital technologies and related innovations might influence social models. Bastien also carries a discrete, but stubborn, passion for experimenting with interactive writing processes. Aside Design Friction, Bastien is also an associate designer at Casus Ludi and a visiting lecturer on the topics of design fiction and games for futures (L’École de Design Nantes Atlantique, Umea Institute of Design, AHO Oslo).

Twitter: @Kastien

Website: http://design-friction.com/

Andreas Zingerle is a media artist, designer and researcher from Austria. As part of the Kairus art collective they explore topics such as vulnerabilities in IoT devices, corporatization of city governance in Smart Cities and citizen sensitive projects in which technology is used to reclaim control of our living environments. Their practice based research is closely intertwined with their artistic production, adopting methodologies used by anthropologists and sociologist, their artworks are often informed by archival research, participation observations and field research. Besides the artworks they publish academic research papers and open access publications to contextualize their artworks to wider discourses such as data privacy & security, activism & hacking culture, disruptive art practices, electronic waste and materiality of the internet.

Twitter: @wearekairus

Website: http://kairus.org

Linda Kronman is a media artist and designer. She is currently a PhD candidate at University of Bergen in the Machine Vision project. She holds a MA in New Media from Aalto University, Finland (2010). In her artistic work she explores methods of interactive and transmedial storytelling, visualizing data and creative activism. She is part of the artist duo KairUs and has been producing art together with Andreas Zingerle since 2010. Their artistic research topics includes surveillance, smart cities, IoT, cybercrime, online fraud, electronic waste and machine vision. Together they have edited the books Behind the Smart World (2016) and Internet of Other People’s Things (2018), both open access publication bringing together critical perspectives on everyday use of technology focusing on artistic research and tacit knowledge that is produced through cultures of making, hacking, and reverse engineering. She has organized several participatory workshops, taught at Woosong University, Daejong, South Korea (2017-2018) and presented her work at international exhibitions and conferences including Moscow Young Arts Biennale, Siggraph ASIA, WRO Biennial, ISEA, ELO and Ars Electronica.

Twitter: @wearekairus

Website: http://kairus.org

Özgün Eylül İşcen is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Program of Computational Media, Arts and Cultures at Duke University, United States. Her dissertation examines the current applications of computational media within the context of the Middle East, thereby underlining wider flows of technology, culture, and capital. She has a background in media, film and soundscape studies. She has presented her work at multiple academic and art institutions, as well as published in a variety of edited book volumes, academic journals, and art catalogs. She received her BA in Sociology from Koç University, Turkey, and MA in Interactive Arts and Technology from Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Website: https://cmac.duke.edu/people/ozgun-eylul-iscen