Up Next at Inspace: Data, Technology and Creativity

We are delighted to share the upcoming series of exhibitions taking place at Inspace to kick off our 2025 programme.

This programme features exhibitions that showcase different aspects of research and collaboration that incorporate and combine data, technology and creativity.

Our first exhibition You’re Not Alone showcases the creative work resulting from a participatory community research project that uses photos and storytelling as the tools to connect and share perspectives. Coast to Coast promises to animate Inspace street facing City Screen for a final time this season, scanning and translating a small data set of images onto these large format panoramic projections. This years Science Festival exhibitions will feature interactive and immersive prototypes and displays that reflect this year’s Science Festival theme, Spaceship Earth, exploring the challenges of living on a planet with finite resources. And for Speaking Towards One Another Inspace will be transformed through a multidisciplinary theatrical performance and installation that uses technology and creativity to explore the body, gender representation, and resilience within disability.

You’re Not Alone

Sat – Sat | 1-8 Mar (closed Sun/Tues/Thurs)

This exhibition presents the experiences and priorities of Autistic people with eating disorders through participatory research method Photovoice, which uses photography and storytelling to document and share people’s experiences

Come along experience the stories of this community told through photographs and drawings.

Coast to Coast

Fri-Sun 15-16 Mar

Coast to Coast is a photography exhibition of work created by Caroline Parkinson during her journey across the United States of America, capturing analogue and digital photography of these diverse landscapes.

Check out Inspace City Screens, along Potterrow, to see the translation of this journey, as it lights up Edinburgh’s dark wintery skies.

Inspace at the 2025 Science Festival

Fri-Sat 5 – 20 Apr
[programme announced in Feb]

We are back again this year partnering with the Edinburgh Science Festival to bring you two featured exhibitions. The details are all under wraps until the the programme launch next month, so watch this space.

Check back with us in February for the announcement of this year’s featured exhibitions!

Speaking Towards One Another

Fri-Wed 23 – 22 May

We are delighted to host this unique opening performance which will use live electronics to transform and digitise the singing and speaking voice, and wearable digital technologies to transform British Sign Language into live sounds and visuals.

The first full performance will premiere in Inspace in May 2025 as part of a video and sound installation.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

About the Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

Announcing BRAID x IDI Hybrid Seminar 2025 Spring Series

‘Responsible AI Futures’

Learn from the communities paving the way for Responsible AI development and discover the vital role of the arts & humanities in developing ethical AI futures. 

We’re pleased to announce the upcoming Spring 2025 series of BRAID x IDI Hybrid Seminar Series ‘Responsible AI Futures’ a partnership programme between Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) and the Institute for Design Informatics (IDI).

This series takes place January – May 2025, for which we are hosting the following wonderful speakers:

Programme Details

Date: various dates Jan-May 2025
Time: Thurs 16:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB / Zoom

All events are hybrid, taking place in both Inspace and online via Zoom unless otherwise stated.  

Speakers

30 Jan / Dr Alex Taylor
Reader in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh

13 Feb / Dr Denis Newman-Griffis
Senior Lecturer and Theme Lead in AI for Health at the University of Sheffield

27 Feb / Prof Andrew McStay
Professor in Technology & Society at the University of Bangor

6 Mar / Dr Belen Barros Pena
Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at University of London

13 Mar / Ananda Rutherford [Online only]
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London

20 Mar / Dr Aluna Everitt
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury

27 Mar / Dr Claire Paterson-Young
Associate Professor and Research Leader at the Institute for Social Innovation and Impact at the University of Northampton

24 Apr / Dr Dan McQuillan [Online only]
Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London

15 May / Srravya Chandhiramowuli
PhD candidate in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh

We have a busy programme of talks lined up between January and May. Sign up for our Newsletter so that you don’t miss out. 

To register (for either in-person at Inspace, or online via Zoom) please visit Design Informatics Eventbrite 

Counter Archaeologies of the City-to-Come

An exhibition of digital experiences which reimagine and reconfigure Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge through a ‘digital excavation’ of the once-hidden spaces and imaginaries of this urban artefact.

Counter Archaeologies of the City-to-Come is an exhibition of digital experiences which reimagine and reconfigure Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge through a ‘digital excavation’ of the once-hidden spaces and imaginaries of this urban artefact. The digital experiences will propose new stories and myths which imagine and speculate alternative futures for the monumental civic infrastructure of the bridge and the wider urban context. The exhibition is produced by students, staff and researchers from Edinburgh College of Art, exploring the potential of digital technologies as tools for world-building im/possible futures.

This project is led by the Image|Imaging|Interiors research cluster at Edinburgh College of Art, and is supported by supported by the Student Experience Grant, Inspace and the Institue for Design Informatics. The exhibition is part of the open program for Architecture Fringe 2025, the inter/national festival of design, architecture and the built environment.

Exhibition Details

Dates: 11 – 15 Jun, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 16:00 daily | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Launch Event

Dates: 11 Jun, 2025
Time: 17:30
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

About Image|Imaging|Interior research cluster

The Image|Imaging|Interior research cluster explores new crossdisplinary practices and frameworks of knowledge-making through which to interrogate the interior, its image, and its imaging. The contemporary interior, its design and fabrication, is a 3-dimensional space that is increasingly smeared across and embedded upon the 2-dimensional screen. In the digital image-based society, a range of technological platforms collapse space and reconfigure the interior as a mediated artefact circulated in a multitude of overlapping and colliding virtual and actual 2d/3d conditions. The Image|Imaging|Interior research cluster proposes timely and urgent investigations to explore how virtual and physical spaces, and their design and fabrication, directly engage and inform each other, to present arrangements at the interstice of 2d and 3d, image and actual.

The Image|Imaging|Interior research cluster collaborates across Edinburgh College of Art and The Glasgow School of Art

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI   

An exhibition of new Art Commissions by Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) presenting seven outstanding UK-based artists aimed at exploring and enriching the responsible AI ecosystem through artistic expression, and premiered for the 2025 Edinburgh Summer Festivals.  

Hanna Barakat  & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Tipping Point explores how artists can help us more wisely respond to the present realities and near-future horizons of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Featuring seven newly commissioned artworks from across the UK, the exhibition presents new ways of thinking about today’s AI, the futures we want and the communities needed to build it. Artists include Louise Ashcroft, Julie Freeman, Wesley Goatley, Identity 2.0, Rachel Maclean, Kiki Shervington-White, Studio Above & Below.

Commissioned artworks, which range from digital installations to sculptural interventions, zines and comedy sketches, are set to address themes that reimagine AI uptake, inspire activism and resilience, and showcase artistic creativity in the field. These themes align with BRAID’s mission to build public awareness, break down structural barriers in AI, and reimagine responsible AI perspectives and practices, providing a platform for artists to share their visions and for audiences to reflect on the role of AI in our society.

Representing more than an exhibition, the project is a step towards better, more thoughtful conversations about the future of AI in our lives, and we look forward to working with the artists across the year to bring these conversations to life.

This art commissioning programme is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and delivered by BRAID in partnership with Inspace at the Institute for Design Informatics, with support from Better Images of AI.

Exhibition Details

Dates: Mon-Sun, 7 – 31 Aug, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Featured artists

Image by Arda Awais

Identity 2.0

Identity 2.0 is a creative studio imagining better digital futures. Their work explores inclusive stories about our relationship to technology.

Since 2018, they’ve transformed research into creative mediums and playful knowledge spaces and have worked with Stop Killer Robots, The Royal Society, and Museum of London. They have also spoken at the World Wide Web Foundation, University of Oxford and University Arts of London about curating exhibitions, using art for social change, and creative entrepreneurship.

www.identity20.org

Julie Freeman

Julie Freeman works with natural living systems and emergent technologies. Her large scale installations, sound sculptures and online artworks have, since the early 1990s, pioneered her conceptual and critical approach to working with sound and real-time data as living and malleable art materials. 

Julie has shown work at leading institutions including the V&A, the ICA, Modern Art Oxford, the Barbican and the Science Museum, as well as internationally. She has been recognised by many organisations including the BBC, The Guardian, and New Scientist.  

Julie founded the Open Data Institute’s art programme ‘Data as Culture’ in 2012. She is a TED Fellow, co-founder of Fine Acts, and runs Translating Nature, a digital and data art studio. 

www.translatingnature.org

Kiki Shervington-White

Kiki is a visual artist and multimedia storyteller based out of Birmingham. She has a degree in Design for Art Direction from the University of the Arts, and over five years of experience in content creation for TV, film, and social media. Specialising in visual communication, Kiki uses her experience of public engagement in science, cultural organising and creative placemaking to explore the intersection of art direction and interaction design within communications, firmly believing that storytelling can drive positive change.

Kiki is dedicated to promoting equitable and inclusive creative experiences for all and takes a culturally responsive approach to producing engaging media that resonates with Black communities in the UK, in particular. She is committed to uplifting Black Women in their communities to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate fully in society.

www.civicsciencemedia.com

Louise Ashcroft

Speaking fiction to power, Louise Ashcroft’s work meddles with the bizarre logic of late capitalism and playfully addresses its social issues. Her recent film ‘What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting’ (2024) is a research-comedy foray into the fertility industry’s inequalities and her own queer journey to non-parenthood. A related project ‘No Kids Nursery Rhymes’ (2024-5) surveyed 180 childfree (by choice or otherwise) people, turning their complex experiences into catchy songs, which were sung by a choir of non-parents. In other work, Louise is anarchically redesigning St.Peter’s School Huntingdon in partnership with Wysing Arts Centre and hundreds of pupils who are making animated cardboard dioramas.

Past projects have involved guerrilla residencies in shopping centres, a generative storytelling coat with 50 pockets which turns feely trash into collectively improvised fables, and a collab with recycling plant workers in Exeter searching for the dark sublime of landfill by making glitchy e-waste instruments. 

www.louiseashcroft.org

Images Credit: Lena Kuzmich 2021

Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean has spent the last decade showcasing her ground-breaking work in galleries, museums, film festivals and on television. Working across a variety of media, including video, digital print, paintings and VR, she makes complex and layered works that reference politics, fairy tales, celebrity culture and more. 

She has shown her work widely, both in the UK and internationally, receiving critical acclaim in the spheres of film and visual art. Her major exhibitions include solo shows at Tate Britain and National Gallery, London; Arsenal Contemporary, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany;  and KWM Art Centre, Beijing. Maclean represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with her film commission Spite Your Face. 

 In 2013, Maclean was awarded the prestigious Margaret Tait Award. She has been twice shortlisted for the Jarman Award.  

www.rachelmaclean.com

Studio Above&Below

Studio Above&Below

Studio Above&Below is an award-winning art and technology practice founded by Daria Jelonek (DE) and Perry-James Sugden (UK) after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Grounded in research-based methodologies, their work bridges the gaps between humans, machines, and our umwelt, exploring how media art can foster more meditative, healing, and sustainable interactions with our surroundings.

Since its founding in 2018, the duo has specialised in creating immersive artworks that combine Mixed Realities (XR), digital art, and data systems to make invisible phenomena tangible, challenging predetermined technological structures. Their large-scale public artworks integrate advanced technologies, such as real-time environmental data and meditative scenography, to give our umwelt a voice and reveal the unseen.

www.studioaboveandbelow.com

Image courtesy of the Artist

Wesley Goatley

Wesley Goatley is a critical artist and researcher based in London, UK. His work critically interrogates the myths and manipulations of the AI industry and its relations to society, geopolitics, and the climate crisis, and how art practice can intervene.

He has given talks on his practice and research at events such as Global Art Forum Singapore, the McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology in Toronto, CTM Festival Berlin, and the European Data Forum Eindhoven.

His installations, performances, and films have been shown at international venues including Eyebeam in New York, Berghain in Berlin, The Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He has a 25-year practice as an experimental performer and musician, including work for labels such as Kranky (US) and Southern (UK).

www.wesleygoatley.com

About BRAID

BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) is a 6-year national research programme funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, led by The University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the BBC. It is co-directed by Shannon Vallor and Ewa Luger, working alongside a team of co-investigators representing the breadth of the Arts and Humanities.

About Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

About Inspace

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Authenticity Unmasked: Unveiling AI-Driven Realities Through Art   

An exhibition of new Art Commissions by BRAID funded project CREA-TEC: Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI Technology to Empower Creatives presenting three UK-based artists aimed at exploring how Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies impact perceptions and values of authenticity, and premiered for the 2025 Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburhg Festival Fringe.  

Still image from The Nth Wave by Theodore Koterwas.

AI-generated content is reshaping how we perceive truth and authenticity. From viral deep fakes to AI-altered political videos designed to manipulate public opinion, digital authenticity is increasingly uncertain. AI tools can even rewrite personal history, generating images of moments that never existed or altering past memories. The artworks presented in Authenticity Unmasked exhibition will challenge our understanding of authenticity, engaging audiences in questions such as: when does authenticity in digital content matter to us? What influences our perception of what is real or fabricated? What shapes our trust in human-made creations?

This Commission programme is led by CREA-TEC (“Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI Technology to Empower Creatives”), a research project at the University of Edinburgh conducted in collaboration with Adobe and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), co-founded by Adobe in 2019 to enhance transparency and access to the provenance history of digital media.

Exhibition Details

Artists: Georgia Gardner, Kinnari Saraiya, dmstfctn
Dates: Mon-Sun, 7 – 17 Aug, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: G.07 at University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum

Featured artists

Image provided by Georgia Gardner

Georgia Gardner

Georgia Gardner is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Scotland, working with research-driven performance, video, sound, and writing. Georgia’s practice explores embodiment, (dis)obedience, and intersecting forms of reproduction that create a social template for success. This template instigates a rhythm of other-oriented striving and quiets self-conceptions of worthiness. Queering this template that often correlates otherness with failure, Georgia’s practice spends time with our everyday, embodied, and empathetic rebellions.

“I am interested in researching how the central concepts of my practice interact with the developing technological ecology in the arts. Particularly, I am thinking about technomorality and how my artistic values—empathy, embodiment, and introspection—conflict with artificial production.”
https://georgiagardner.com/

Image provided by Kinnari Saraiya

Kinnari Saraiya
Kinnari Saraiya (b. Bombay, based in London) is an artist, curator, writer and thinker of the colonial present. She works within the gaps in knowledge, the inaccuracies of interpretations, the mistranslations of a text, where myth weaves around a historical narrative forcing the collision of pre-humanist thought and posthumanist desire. Through the recovery and binding of ancient and new tools, resources, and technologies, her work constructs a portal, a time capsule that helps define, find, create, escape, and imagine a fluid future.

“I’m really excited to be part of this commission, experimenting with artificial intelligence, algorithms, and archives to build speculative stories and challenge how we remember, interpret, and imagine new futures.”

www.kinnarisaraiya.com/

Image provided by dmstfctn

dmstfctn

dmstfctn, (f.k.a Demystification Committee), is a London-based duo formed by Oliver Smith and Francesco Tacchini, working with installation, performance, films, and video games. Their work has focused on opaque systems of technology and power, most recently looking at anomalies in artificial intelligence. dmstfctn often directly involve audiences in their work, inviting them into the ‘demystification’ of systems by replicating and replaying them together, and into their ‘remystification’ by building worlds, characters and myths atop them. They have performed and exhibited internationally in venues such as Berghain, Serpentine, HKW and Onassis, and at festivals such as Unsound, CTM and transmediale.
“We’ve been searching for the deceptive characters role-played by AI systems for the last few years. We look forward to think back and think further on this with a new research community.”

dmstfctn.net/

About CREA-TEC

CREA-TEC (“Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI Technology to Empower Creatives”), a research project at the University of Edinburgh conducted in collaboration with Adobe and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), co-founded by Adobe in 2019 to enhance transparency and access to the provenance history of digital media. CREA-TEC is supported by the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) programme with funds received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

About BRAID

BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) is a 6-year national research programme funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, led by The University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the BBC. It is co-directed by Shannon Vallor and Ewa Luger, working alongside a team of co-investigators representing the breadth of the Arts and Humanities.

About Institute for Design Informatics

In the Institute for Design Informatics, we fuse design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. We create prototypes and experiences that make real to people the ideas that underpin the data society, and aim to ensure that new technologies sustain and enhance human values.

How to Find the Soul of a Sailor

How to Find the Soul of a Sailor, a deeply personal and innovative project that fuses the past, present, and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory.

Immerse yourself in a deeply personal journey to the future of our oceans and sailors’ time at sea. Experience the Mediterranean sea through the eyes of Molga’s late father, Tadeusz Molga, a devoted sailor. During his voyages, he meticulously documented his passion for the ocean, a love he shared with young Kasia as she accompanied him on his ship. Fifteen years after his passing, Molga is left with a profound sense of loss and a collection of his cherished diaries. When the memories of their time together begin to fade, she turns to these diaries, clinging to the remnants of his voice and their shared experiences at sea. Molga’s work captures an emotional and environmental journey highlighting the fragility of our oceans, the ever-changing work conditions of sailors, and speculates on the future and what her father would say. 

Molga uses The New Real’s specialised experiential AI platform, The New Real Observatory, to reimagine her father’s words, projecting them 50 years into the future. This project is a powerful fusion of memory and technology, blending generative AI tools with climate data to create an emotionally charged narrative that visualises both the past and future of our oceans.

Molga’s exhibition uniquely combines English and Polish, creating a bilingual experience that delves into the profound topics of personal connection to climate change and the digital afterlife. Her work not only honours the enduring power of memory but also showcases the potential benefits and drawbacks of various artificial intelligence tools to preserve and transform our personal histories.

This work is the result of The New Real 2023-2024 commission “Uncanny Machines” supported by the Scottish AI Alliance. Hosted at Inspace Gallery with additional support from Arts Council England.

Exhibition Details

Dates: 
Fri-Sat, 13 – 21 Dec, 2024 (closed Sun)
Mon-Sat, 6 – 11 Jan, 2025 (closed Sun)
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Artist Talk and Opening Event

Date: Thurs 12 Dec, 2024
Time: 17:00 – 20:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

About the Artist

Kasia Molga (UK/PL) has refused to be labelled – design fusionist, artist, environmentalist, creative coder and technologist who for over a decade has sought ways of collaboration with nature, predominantly focusing on the ever-changing human relation to and perception of the natural environment and fellow ‘earthlings’. Her award winning work has been exhibited worldwide (i,e. Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, MIS (BR), Centre Pompidou and more). Kasia has taken part in many international art & science residencies and has lectured and mentored regularly in the EU and UK. An affinity with the ocean is evident in Kasia’s work, born from her time growing up on merchant navy vessels with her sailor father and she is the proud holder of a diving licence. studiomolga.com

About the organisers

The New Real is a leading research hub on arts and AI at The University of Edinburgh, fostering innovative projects at the intersection of technology, creativity, and society. The New Real explores how AI impacts life at a profound level, often interacting with us in fascinating and unanticipated ways, and illuminates how emerging technology can become a creative, playful and deeply impactful part of everyday living. The New Real is developed in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, Edinburgh College of Art, and The Edinburgh Futures Institute. The New Real | Home

The Scottish AI Alliance is tasked with the delivery of the vision outlined in Scotland’s AI Strategy by empowering Scotland’s people, supporting Scotland’s businesses and organisations, and influencing policy impacting Scotland. The Scottish AI Alliance is a strategic collaboration between The Data Lab and the Scottish Government and is led by a Minister-appointed Chair and overseen by Senior Responsible Officers from The Data Lab (CEO) and the Scottish Government (CDO). Its activities are overseen and advised by governance and outcomes focussed advisory groups with representation across society and Scotland’s AI community. www.scottishai.com

Scotland’s national Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy was launched in March 2021 and set out a vision for Scotland to become a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI.

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. They help people in every corner of the country to experience and benefit from creativity. They do this by investing in artists and organisations that make and deliver exceptional, inspirational work for our communities. Homepage (artscouncil.org.uk)

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

How to Find the Soul of a Sailor Artist Talk and Opening Event

Kasia Molga Unveils the First Iteration of her Immersive Multimedia Experience, How to Find the Soul of a Sailor, at Inspace

Kasia Molga, an acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, designer and storyteller invites you to explore her first iteration of How to Find the Soul of a Sailor, a deeply personal and innovative project that fuses the past, present, and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory. This work is the result of The New Real 2023-2024 commission “Uncanny Machines” supported by the Scottish AI Alliance. Hosted at Inspace Gallery with additional support from Arts Council England, this unique early access version runs from December 12-21, 2024, and January 6-11, 2025.

This event will feature an Artist Talk and light refreshments will be provided. Tickets are limited. Please reserve a ticket here.

Artist Talk and Opening Event Details

Date: Thurs 12 Dec 2024
Time: 17:00 – 20:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Exhibition Details

How to Find the Soul of a Sailor, is a deeply personal and innovative project that fuses the past, present, and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory. Immerse yourself in a deeply personal journey to the future of our oceans and sailors’ time at sea, through the eyes of Molga’s late father, Tadeusz Molga, a devoted sailor.

This exhibition is a must-see for those interested in the intersections of art, technology, and the environment, offering a poignant reflection on the future of our planet and the boundless possibilities of human-AI collaboration.

Dates: 
Thurs – Sat| 12-21 Dec 2024 (closed on Sundays)
Mon – Sat | 6 -11 Jan 2025 (closed on Sundays)
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

About the Artist

Kasia Molga (UK/PL) has refused to be labelled – design fusionist, artist, environmentalist, creative coder and technologist who for over a decade has sought ways of collaboration with nature, predominantly focusing on the ever-changing human relation to and perception of the natural environment and fellow ‘earthlings’. Her award winning work has been exhibited worldwide (i,e. Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, MIS (BR), Centre Pompidou and more). Kasia has taken part in many international art & science residencies and has lectured and mentored regularly in the EU and UK. An affinity with the ocean is evident in Kasia’s work, born from her time growing up on merchant navy vessels with her sailor father and she is the proud holder of a diving licence. studiomolga.com

*Please register your seat for the Artist Talk and Opening Event. The exhibition is open to drop-In.

For more information, please contact Courtney BatesProject Manager of The New Real at c.bates@ed.ac.uk.

For inquiries about accessibility, please contact the DI team at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk or visit the Access webpage for more venue information: https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/venue-access/

About the Organisers

About The New Real:

The New Real is a leading research hub on arts and AI at The University of Edinburgh, fostering innovative projects at the intersection of technology, creativity, and society. The New Real explores how AI impacts life at a profound level, often interacting with us in fascinating and unanticipated ways, and illuminates how emerging technology can become a creative, playful and deeply impactful part of everyday living. The New Real is developed in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, Edinburgh College of Art, and The Edinburgh Futures Institute.

About Scottish AI Alliance:

Scotland’s national Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy was launched in March 2021 and set out a vision for Scotland to become a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI.

The Scottish AI Alliance is tasked with the delivery of the vision outlined in Scotland’s AI Strategy by empowering Scotland’s people, supporting Scotland’s businesses and organisations, and influencing policy impacting Scotland. The Scottish AI Alliance is a strategic collaboration between The Data Lab and the Scottish Government and is led by a Minister-appointed Chair and overseen by Senior Responsible Officers from The Data Lab (CEO) and the Scottish Government (CDO). Its activities are overseen and advised by governance and outcomes focussed advisory groups with representation across society and Scotland’s AI community.

About Inspace:

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics and is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity. Our public programme connects data, research and creative talent. We host events and exhibitions where people can explore, learn, debate and create. Our programme unlocks digital technologies, tools and data and explores their role in society through a creative lens. We are home to Inspace City Screens, a unique seven screen street front projection space visible from Potterrow in Edinburgh.

About Arts Council England:

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. They help people in every corner of the country to experience and benefit from creativity. They do this by investing in artists and organisations that make and deliver exceptional, inspirational work for our communities.

Design Informatics

Website: designinformatics.org

Instagram: designinformatics

Twitter: @DesignInf

Inspace

Website: inspace.ed.ac.uk

Instagram: inspacegallery

Twitter: @InspaceG

Inspace hosts ‘A Call to Action’ student exhibition from exciting new course

A Call to Action

Revolutionising Design for the Climate Emergency Student Exhibition, presenting works that challenge us to rethink our relationship with the environment and confront the urgent realities of the climate

Private View

Private View: Friday 29th November 17:00 – 20:00

Exhibition Details

Date: Sat – Sun | 30 Nov – 1st Dec 2024
Time: Sat 11:00 – 16:00 | Sun 11:00 – 15:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

This exhibition presents a collection of student works that challenge us to rethink our relationship with the environment and confront the urgent realities of the climate emergency. Through their designs, students explore how we can foster a sense of responsibility and care, while addressing critical issues such as global inequalities, food waste, microplastics and the impact of fast fashion.

These projects envision a future where design fosters equity and sustainability, where the true cost of consumption is acknowledged, and where the health of our planet and its people are prioritised.

Visit Inspace across the weekend to celebrate this exciting new course and support Edinburgh College of Art design students’ innovative work.

Authenticity Unmasked Open Call for Artists

Inspace is delighted to share ‘Authenticity Unmasked: Unveiling AI-Driven Realities Through Art’ Open Call for Artist Commissions, delivered by CREA-TEC (“Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI Technology to Empower Creatives”), a project led by the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Adobe.

CREA-TEC aims to promote the responsible integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools in creative practices, contributing to an understanding of who is empowered by these new forms of creativity and who, instead, needs to be protected.

About the Call

CREA-TEC are looking for artists to explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies impact perceptions and values of authenticity. They will commission three artworks that engage with this theme in the context of cultural content, political communication, and personal experience. These artworks will be presented in a public exhibit in Edinburgh in August 2025.

Timeline

29th December 2024 17:00 GMT – Submission deadline.
24th January 2025 – Announcement of selected artists.
7th July 2025 – Finalised projects deadline.

Image Credit: Still image from The Nth Wave by Theodore Koterwas.

Exciting new responsible AI Open Call for Artists

Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics are delighted to be partnering with BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) project who will commission five UK-based artists or artist groups to create artworks that explore new ways to think about today’s AI and the futures we want work in responsible AI to help us build.

All that is needed is a clear engagement with responsible AI; it is not required that AI technology be used in the art making process.

The aim of these commissions is to:

  1. encourage artists to enrich and expand the responsible AI ecosystem by making artworks that help us more wisely respond to present realities and near future horizons of AI
  2. demonstrate how art can critique and improve responsible AI tools, methods and approaches in creative and engaging ways
  3. inspire and empower members of the public to better understand, engage with and inform responsible AI development.
About BRAID

Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) works to enable the arts and humanities to enhance the development and uptake of responsible AI in the UK.

We want to empower the responsible AI community in the UK to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks that AI poses to our society and the environment. At a time when the use of AI is spreading at scale and at speed, this requires:

  • the building of public awareness, capability and confidence to engage and inform responsible AI, giving voice to individuals and groups that are currently underrepresented and disempowered
  • identifying and breaking down the structural barriers and divides that currently stand in the way of a healthy, connected and flourishing responsible AI ecosystem
  • improving or reimagining the ways we deliver responsible AI, centring notions of accountability, sustainability, answerability, resistance and public recourse.

Artists can provide necessary, vibrant, imaginative and creative visions for responsible AI that can help us to meet the above challenges.

These commissions are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and delivered by BRAID in partnership with Inspace at the Institute for Design Informatics, with support from Edinburgh Art Festival and Better Images of AI.

Images Credit: Image altered from original / Jazmin Morris & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / Braided Networks 1 / CC-BY 4.0