| 1 Jun 2023 | 18:00 - 20:00 | Online | |
- Description
Description
LASER Talks at Cambridge in collaboration with LASER UCLA
Hosts: Victoria Vesna, Satinder Gill, and Chrysi Nanou
We warmly invite you to the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) gathering, jointly hosted by Victoria Vesna of UCLA Art Sci Center and Satinder Gill from the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge. Artists are well-placed to ask critical questions that are aware of but not constrained by the nature of AI, grappling with questions of access, agency, and equity in relation to AI and its impact on the art ecosystem, including the encoding of bias and the (digital) marginalisation of various social groups, including but not limited to people of colour, immigrants, and women. Such critique of AI allows for the emergence of those bodies (of knowledge) that stem from, or live through, the types of cosmologies that have been marginalised or erased through colonisation but can be recentered through processes of decolonisation, i.e. through a questioning of the patterns of power that shape our intellectual, political, economic and social worlds.In 2019, Amir Baradaran was at the forefront of the ‘AnotherAI.art: Decolonising Art Ecosystem Summit’, which united over 80 distinguished thinkers and professionals to delve into the intersections of critical discourse, art creation, and artificial intelligence. This initiative, endorsed by the New Museum, the Knight Foundation, and Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, sparked the concept of a unique issue recommended by Victoria Vesna, North American editor of AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication. The groundwork established during the summit has grown in importance given the advent of Chat GPT, presenting substantial and pressing questions that our society faces today. Satinder Gill, the managing editor of AI & Society and Victoria Vesna are delighted to extend an invitation to Amir and contributors to the special issue for a series of intriguing dialogues.
The Cambridge LASER talks (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendez-vous) questions the separation and propagation of art and science as distinct categories of knowing and being. We ask, ‘What is creativity in science and the arts? What is experimental practice in art, science, or philosophy? Where do scientific and artistic attitudes, inquiries, methods overlap? How do they differ and complement each other? Can such understanding help shape our technological, urban, economic, and environmental futures for an ecologically and socially sustainable life and wellbeing’.
