Artist in Residence

Creative AI

with Creative Informatics

Creative AI Artist Residency Sept 2022-April 2023

New Artist in Residence Programme announced for Inspace, focused on the theme of Creative AI and supported by Creative Informatics. The selected Artist will work alongside researchers to look at developments in AI and to provide a creative lens into the technology which will be publicly accessible. 

We are delighted to announce Theodore Koterwas as our new Creative AI Artist in Residence. Koterwas was selected from 25 strong international applications, each applicant offered a unique take on AI and came from a variety of disciplines. Koterwas proposes to look at AI from the perspective of the human body and gestures, moving away from more traditional responses using visuals and sound. Koterwas will create an “other” which you can feel in the air in front of you and who will continually learn to communicate with you through physical gesture and touch alone. 

Koterwas is an artist working with the science of perception, data, sound, video and physical phenomena to make things resonate in new ways. He has an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and has produced work for the University of Oxford, Edinburgh Science Festival and has been shortlisted for the Lumen Prize.

Koterwas’ work will pose a number of questions to the audience which will be further developed as the residency progresses and he notes of the AI: 

We will perhaps unavoidably conceive of this presence in human-centred terms: a ghost, or an invisible friend, and indeed this might be justified as it will be trained on data produced by human bodies through motion capture and bio-sensors. We will presume it has a “brain” controlling it or at least a mind of its own, but the real test will come through the body: when we first reach out into thin air and feel it touch us back. Will that moment of contact produce an uncanny revulsion or a sense of connection? What will this “other” learn from these? Will it begin to learn it’s otherness through these interactions? Will this otherness be reinforced further as some of us act out our worst impulses to test its limits? Or is there something about the intimacy of touch and gesture that brings out our better angels (both human and artificial)?

Theodore Koterwas

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics; commissioning and producing creative activity that unlocks digital technology and explores its role in society. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent.

We are really excited by the possibilities of Ted’s project for his residency. It will inspire our Design Informatics students to play with haptics and modalities that are beyond the visual, to create public experience that will intrigue and compel, and to foster new collaborations with colleagues in the School of Informatics. We’re truly delighted to be working with Ted over the next year.

Professor John Vines, Co-Director of the Institute for Design Informatics

The Creative AI Residency is supported by Creative Informatics, which supports innovative new data-driven creative work across Edinburgh and South East Scotland. 

Congratulations to Theodore on his selection for the first Creative AI Residency at Inspace. AI continues to be an area of development that fascinates and mystifies people in equal measure. We hope that this residency will enable visitors to engage with AI in new and exciting ways, providing them with a better understanding of how machine learning works, through what promises to be an innovative and exhilarating interactive exhibit.

Nicola Osborne, Programme Manager for Creative Informatics

KEY DATES: Mid-Sept 2022- Residency starts, Work in Progress Event January 2023, Final output to be shown in the exhibition Tactile Intelligence, as part of Edinburgh Science Festival April 2023. 

To find out more about Koterwas’ work visit http://www.theodorekoterwas.com

To see previous examples of our first residency visit https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/space-and-satellites-artist-residency/

Design Informatics https://www.designinformatics.org

Creative Informatics https://creativeinformatics.org

Image: Nth Wave by Theodore Koterwas.