practice

Talk : Making a Chatbot

With the rise of nationalism it is important to reassess collective and individual (national) identities and search for new ways of questioning notions of authenticity and origin. In my mind, Karen Barad’s theory of intra-action is useful for this end. Intra-action posits that objects or phenomena do not precede their interaction but instead emerge within a system. Through this lens we will reassess the phenomena of ‘Britishness’, particularly by bringing machine learning algorithms into play. In relation to this, I will discuss my recent Sky Arts Art 50 commission, Britbot and think more widely about how dominant narratives (such as those around British culture and history) may be diffracted into strange new forms.

www.britbot.org is a net-based chatbot which uses both rule based and generative models to explore the concept of ‘Britishness’ at this critical moment in history. Trained initially on the UK government’s citizenship test and corresponding textbook Life in the United Kingdom 2017, as people talk to Britbot it gradually learns from what they say becoming a wider reflection of ‘Britishness’ today.

As part of the ART AI Festival 2019 artwork trail, Libby Heaney's Britbot is on display at Phoenix, 4 Midland Street, Leicester, LE1 1TG - see downloadable map here. As part of the ART AI Festival 2019 artwork trail, Libby Heaney's Britbot is on display at Phoenix, 4 Midland Street, Leicester, LE1 1TG - download map.

Talk : State of the AI-Art

Speaker : Luba Elliot

This talk will give an overview of how artists and creative technologists are using and thinking about artificial intelligence. Over the past couple of years, there has been increasing interest in applying the latest advances in machine learning to creative projects in art, music, film, theatre and beyond. From Google's DeepDream and style transfer to the world's first computer-generated musical playing in London's West End, more and more creative AI projects are moving beyond the world of research and academia into the public eye. Likewise, the art world has been critically interpreting the impact of these technologies, highlighting the problems of bias, uniformity and surveillance.

AI in Recent Art Practice

This talk will give an overview of how artists and creative technologists are using and thinking about artificial intelligence.

Over the past couple of years, there has been increasing interest in applying the latest advances in machine learning to creative projects in art, music, film, theatre and beyond. From Google's DeepDream and style transfer to the world's first computer-generated musical playing in London's West End, more and more creative AI projects are moving beyond the world of research and academia into the public eye. Likewise, the art world has been critically interpreting the impact of these technologies, highlighting the problems of bias, uniformity and surveillance.

More about the artist here:

Luba Elliott is a curator and researcher specialising in artificial intelligence in the creative industries. She is currently working to educate and engage the broader public about the latest developments in creative AI through monthly meetups, talks and tech demonstrations. This year, she is curating Impakt Festival, a 5-day event with exhibitions, film screenings, and lectures around the theme of Post-Truth and AI.

Previously, she has organised workshops and exhibitions on art and AI for The Photographers’ Gallery, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and Google. Luba is also a member of the AI Think Tank Council of the British Interactive Media Association. Prior to that, she worked in start-ups, including the art collector database Larry’s List. She holds a degree in Modern Languages from Cambridge University and a Certificate in Design Thinking from Hasso-Plattner Institute in Potsdam.