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.
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:
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
demonstrate how art can critique and improve responsible AI tools, methods and approaches in creative and engaging ways
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
Join us for An Obscure Camera an interactive moving image installation where you the viewer become the performer and conductor of your own experience.
An Obscure Camera
Conceived and Created by Nic Sandiland
The fascination with Camera Obscura has captured audience imagination drawing people worldwide from Victorian times to present day. The spectacle of entering a dark room through which to witness and actively peer out to the surrounding landscape is both theatrically enticing and technically mysterious. An Obscure Camera develops this form for a 21st-century context through a physically interactive installation. We enter a large dark space and are immersed by a multitude of ornate Rococo frames projected onto the surrounding walls. Each frame contains a close-up view of the live outdoor environment outside of the building. As we walk around, the frames move with us, matching our speed and direction. New subjects enter and pass through the frames as our viewpoint changes. We can scan, track, and follow different features in the outdoor spaces, including its inhabitants, through our motion within the space.
An Obscure Camera gives visitors the agency to physically enact the choices made by ubiquitous AI algorithms that observe, scrutinise, and categorise our every move. In contrast to the minimal actions of clicking a mouse or pressing a key, visitors have to move their whole body through the installation in order to ‘follow’ those outside. In this way, participants not only ‘embody the AI’, but are confronted, first-hand, with the associated ethical and social implications of their choices/actions.
Important notice: This work involves the temporary installation of street facing cameras in the windows of Inspace, which capture a live feed of passersby. Footage from the camera feeds is being used as the input for the installation but none of the data is recorded or stored.
Access the Data Protection Impact and Legitimate Interest Assessments here for more information.
If you have any feedback, questions or concerns about his project, please email:designinformatics@ed.ac.uk
Join us in Inspace for this Artist Talk, Audience Q&A followed by a preview of the installation. Join us for this unique opportunity to hear more about the work and to get a sneak preview and experience of the work.
Nic Sandiland is a UK based artist working across installation, performance, and film.
Through his work, Nic seeks to re-enliven the body, revisiting and revaluing the viewer’s actions through their innate physical presence. To do this, his work has drawn on cinematic techniques such as slow motion and moving camera mechanisms and, more recently, machine vision, LiDAR, and robotics.
Nic has made work in London, Europe and Southeast Asia and has presented at theatres, art galleries, and many unusual venues. His film work has been shown worldwide and has been broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4).
His work has been commissioned by organisations such as: the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Arts Centre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and The Brighton Festival and he is a regular collaborator with choreographers Yael Flexer and Rosemary Lee.
He has also worked as an interactive technology designer with: Station House Opera, Blast Theory, Gary Stevens and Imogen Stidworthy. He is also a producer and editor for Extant Theatre, the UK’s leading professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists and theatre practitioners.
Nic has taught workshops on digital technology and dance around the World including: Bangalore, India and Seoul, South Korea. He also taught video production for 10 years at London Contemporary Dance School (MA dance for camera) and is currently a senior lecturer in fine art at Middlesex University. In 2022 Nic completed his PhD on agency within interactive installation.
Join us on the evening of Wednesday 20th of November for this unique opportunity to hear more about An Obscure Camera and get a sneak preview and experience of the installation.
Event Details
This event will feature an Artist Talk and Audience Q&A followed by a preview of the installation. Join the artist to experience the installation and physically enact the choices made by ubiquitous AI algorithms that observe, scrutinise, and categorise our every move.
Nic Sandiland is a UK based artist working across installation, performance, and film. Through his work, Nic seeks to re-enliven the body, revisiting and revaluing the viewer’s actions through their innate physical presence. To do this, his work has drawn on cinematic techniques such as slow motion and moving camera mechanisms and, more recently, machine vision, LiDAR, and robotics. Nic has made work in London, Europe and Southeast Asia and has presented at theatres, art galleries, and many unusual venues. His film work has been shown worldwide and has been broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4).
Event Host
Theodore Koterwas is an artist, designer and musician seeking to draw critical attention to aspects of daily experience that go unnoticed but profoundly impact on how we understand each other, technology and the environment. His multidisciplinary practice produces art installations, performances, museum exhibitions, and software applications for public engagement, creative collaboration, and teaching and learning. Currently he is focused on physical interactions with artificial intelligence, utilising haptics, computer vision, deep reinforcement learning, and natural language processing to investigate the impact of embodied engagement on how we perceive, collaborate and empathise with ‘others’, both human and artificial.
Running Order
17.00 – Welcome by Theodore Koterwas 17.05 – Talk by Nic Sandiland 17.35 – Q&A 18.00 – End 18.00 – 19.00 – Preview + Reception
Please note limited seats are available at Inspace for in-person audiences, so please book tickets in advance.
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/
Join us on the evening of Thursday 7th of November to hear the powerful stories behind the Can AI Represent Care? exhibition.
As our reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) grows, we invite you to reflect on what it reveals about our understanding of care and later life, and how to use AI tools responsibly. At this special reception and sharing event, stories behind ourexhibition featuring images of care created by AI and older adults will be discussed. There will be opportunities for Q&A and discussion among the attendees. Come along if you are interested in AI, images, or care!
Melody Wang, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, with a research focus on participatory design, older adults, and care technology. Dr. Nichole Fernandez, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, visual sociologist and media studies. For more information of the underpinning research, please visit the Images of Care research website below
The event is also part of Being Human Festival, led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
Join us and Images of Care researchers on Monday morning to create your own images of care using AI
As our reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) grows, we invite you to reflect on what it reveals about our understanding of care and later life, and how to use AI tools responsibly. Alongside ourexhibition featuring images of care created by AI and older adults, this workshop is an opportunity for you to delve deeper into the topic of AI-generated images and care. You will be able to create your own images of care using AI (with tutorials and help from the organisers) and discuss your thoughts with other participants. There will also be opportunity to add your ideas to the exhibition.
No computer or tech experience needed. All equipment and materials will be provided, along with refreshments.
* Please register your seat for the workshop. The exhibition is open and drop-in on Mon-Sun 10am – 5pm (closed Tues and Thurs).
Workshop Details
Date: Mon 4 Nov 2024 Time: 10:00 – 12:00 | Free/Ticketed Locations: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9AB Audience: For anyone interested in but not familiar with AI. Older adults and informal or formal carers especially welcome.
Melody Wang, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, with a research focus on participatory design, older adults, and care technology. Dr. Nichole Fernandez, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, visual sociologist and media studies. For more information of the underpinning research, please visit the Images of Care research website below
The event is also part of Being Human Festival, led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
Join us for an eye-opening exhibition featuring images of care created by older adults and generated by AI!
As our reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) grows, we invite you to reflect on what it reveals about our understanding of care and later life, and how to use AI tools responsibly. This exhibition explores how AI-generated images can uncover biases and misconceptions about care in our society, and the role of technology in shaping these perceptions. What does care mean in our daily lives, and can AI ever understand care?
Date: Mon 4 Nov 2024 Time: 10:00 – 12:00 | Free/Ticketed Locations: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9AB Audience: For anyone interested in but not familiar with AI. Older adults and informal or formal carers especially welcome.
Melody Wang, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, with a research focus on participatory design, older adults, and care technology. Dr. Nichole Fernandez, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, visual sociologist and media studies. For more information of the underpinning research, please visit the Images of Care research website below
The event is also part of Being Human Festival, led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
We are delighted to share the upcoming series of exhibitions taking place at Inspace to bring our 2024 programme to a close.
This programme features three exhibitions that explore AI from a range of different perspectives. Our first exhibition, Can AI Represent Care? seeks to highlight and raise awareness of the biases this technology can perpetuate, encouraging discussion and reflection on the ways we talk about and perceive the role of care in our society. This is followed by An Obscure Camera, an interactive installation that plays with the idea of the Camera Obscura, or pinhole image, but bringing this concept into a 21st-century context through a physically interactive installation. Last but not least we bring this years exhibition programme to a close with How to Find the Soul of the Sailor, a poignant and personal work where the artist shares through the eyes of her late father, an emotional and environmental journey highlighting the fragility of our oceans. Read more below.
Can AI represent Care?
Mon – Sun | 4-10 Nov 2024 (closed Tues/Thurs)
This exhibition explores how AI-generated images can uncover biases and misconceptions about care in our society, and the role of technology in shaping these perceptions. What does care mean in our daily lives, and can AI ever understand care?
If you have an interest in AI, images, or care, do come along!
An Obscure Camera plays with the the long standing fascination with Camera Obscura that has captured audience imagination from Victorian times to present day. Through a physically interactive installation, An Obscure Camera seeks to gives visitors the agency to physically enact the choices made by ubiquitous AI algorithms that observe, scrutinise, and categorise our every move.
Fri-Sat 13 – 21 Dec 2024 (closed Sun) Mon-Sat 6 – 11 Jan 2025 (closed Sun)
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.
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
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.
We were honoured to have two Design Informatics’ and Inspace collaborations, The BOX 2.0 by Fiona Smith and DUCK by Rachel Maclean, presented at the Ars Electronica Festival 2024 in Linz earlier this September.
We are delighted to congratulate Rachel Maclean, creator of DUCK, which received an Honorary Mention in the New Animation Art category of the Prix Ars Electronica. Design Informatics PhD candidate Martin Disley worked closely with Maclean on this deepfake British spy thriller parody starring Sean Connery and Marilyn Monroe.
Produced using deepfake visuals and audio, Maclean, who plays all the characters, swaps her voice and face with the very recognisable cast of actors, while Disley developed bespoke voice clones for each character in the film using state-of-the-art deepfake audio synthesis techniques.
“DUCK explores the fragility and malleability of identity, the slipperiness of reality, and the ramifications of gender-based power dynamics. Society is entering an increasingly more powerful inflection point through the role and impact of more AI. Through this, DUCK satirically reflects on such a moment with a time-bending cultural resonance, reminding us that the issues we fear are also issues we have dealt with in other forms.”
DUCK was produced by Forest of Black and Too Happy Studios with support from Newcastle University, Kunstpalais, and the Institute for Design Informatics.
We were also thrilled to see PhD student Fiona Smith, who is based at the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Biomedical AI at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, attending Ars Electronica Festival to present The BOX 2.0.
For the ARS Electronica Festival 2024, Smith reenvisioned the central sculpture of the artwork The BOX to present the new iteration The BOX 2.0 to festival audiences. The act of bringing THE BOX 2.0 from Edinburgh to Linz symbolized for Smith the international sharing of “data” that was required to build the accurate and fair AI models of the future.
The BOX was an interactive installation presented at the 2024 Edinburgh Science Festival that challenged the audience to consider how diverse medical datasets can be developed to make AI models for healthcare that work for everyone. THE BOX 2.0 was presented by Smith at the JKU Med Campus throughout the Ars Electronica Festival where the work was shared alongside opportunities to discuss the development of fair and accurate AI for healthcare.
The BOX was the outcome of the Residence “STEAM Imaging V—Holding the ‘Digital’ in Medicine to Account,” hosted by Fraunhofer MEVIS, in collaboration with the Institute for Design Informatics, the International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen and the School Center Walle, supported by Ars Electronica.Visit the EIFF website for more information about the full programme
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.
Presenting an exhibition of current research at the Institute of Design Informatics exploring digital authorship and rights, data protection and privacy through the voice of marginalized groups and reflections on the potential societal impacts of AI
Join us at Inspace to chat to researchers about current projects, ORAgen Fables, Citizen Data Agency, AI for the Street… on the Street, the topics they are exploring with opportunities to participate in the research yourself.
Image Credit: Not I, by Unit Test, part of the Sound of Deepfake exhibition 2023. Photographer Chris Scott
Featured Projects
ORAgen Fables
Is there value in tracking contributions in collective storytelling? And what does it mean to recognise others when we add to, or reuse someone else’s work?
Join the researchers leading this project in Inspace to explore these questions for yourself through ORAgen Fables, a digital interactive exhibit which invites visitors to explore, interact, and contribute to collective digital fables about objects and current Design Informatics research.
ORAgen Fables is a research study by the UKRI Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE) Research Centre at Institute of Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh. ORAgen Fables is part of an ongoing research project by DECaDE investigating a technical framework known as ‘ORA’ (standing for ‘ownership’, ‘rights’, and ‘attribution’) that seeks to address digital ownership, rights, and attribution related challenges in reuse and collective making practices. By interacting with ORAgen Fables, we ask visitors to participate in our research study, inviting them to discuss whether they see tracking contributions as valuable, reflect on how this might impact our understanding of digital authorship, and consider if this might shape how others reuse and share content online.
Citizen Data Agency
The Citizens Data Agency project is a design research project exploring people’s data advice needs both today and in the future. It seeks to explore what current and future data privacy support might look like and what current needs should be addressed.
We are seeing technologies being embedded within all aspects of our lives, within our cities, homes and pockets. These interactions create large amounts of information/data which are captured by private organisations and governments for potential benefits, but they also pose increased privacy risks.
Conversations around data protection, digital privacy and online risks do not often involve people from marginalised groups, so their needs and experiences are not included in the design of support and advice. For this project, researchers in the Institute for Design Informatics have partnered with two community organisations – Amina and Datakirk – who provide support for people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Through a series of participatory and co-design workshops we explored possible future speculative data support services designed around their experiences and needs.
The project is funded by the UKRI National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) and the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI).
For further information, please visit the Citizens Data Agency website
Following a successful street-side pop-up collaboration with the Leith community we will be featuring “AI for the Street… on the Street,” at the Edinburgh Doors Open Day, aiming to engage the public in exploring diverse perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI).
Join us at Inspace where you are invited to participate actively with the display, and to offer your own insights and reflections on the potential societal impacts of AI. This intervention seeks to spark conversations and provide means for you to have your say and to consider how AI might influence and shape our future.
AI for the Street… on the Street, is part of AI in the Street 6-month scoping project, aiming to understand the connections and tensions between how people make sense of AI in daily life and how it is conceived by those actors who usually wield power, for example, big tech companies, organisations that decide on policy and governance, and local and national government. This research is set against a backdrop of continued public controversies tied to AI and ongoing efforts to define more ethical and responsible practices in the tech sector.
Motivated by the question “What does Artificial Intelligence mean for the person on the street?”, they chose to centre their research in Leith Walk – situated in the heart of Edinburgh – standing as a vibrant hub with multicultural communities, thriving businesses, cultural hotspots, and long-time residents committed to their neighbourhoods. Capturing the vibrancy of this local area, they wanted to see how and where AI is finding a place in the street and playing a role for local residents and businesses. The hope was to learn how AI should work in response to local individual, public and civic needs, with Leith Walk providing a snapshot, helping them to inform a responsible approach to AI for Edinburgh and across Scotland.
