Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable evening reception to celebrate the exhibition.
Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable evening reception to celebrate the exhibition, part of the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival, and to meet the researchers, designers, artists, students and graduates behind the work on display.
About the Exhibition
Discover how biomaterials and human-centred design could revolutionise surgical environments at this exhibition brought to you by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh. Showcasing a range of artwork, artefacts and prototypes, it offers a hands-on opportunity to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment.
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.
From intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter, to biomaterials and human-centred design, this is just a glimpse of the two featured exhibits Inspace will present at this year’s Festival.
We are delighted to announce that we are back again this year partnering with the Edinburgh Science Festival to bring you two featured exhibitions along with performances and late events.
This year’s Edinburgh Science Festival theme of Spaceship Earth draws on inspiration from science fiction and science fact, questioning how we might better live on Earth. As scientists begin to ponder the wonders of long-term space travel, the Festival invites visitors to enter the mind of an astronaut as a poignant reminder that resources on earth are finite and that we have the tools to utilise to create a sustainable future for us all.
– Edinburgh Science Foundation
Check out the programme highlights below and we look forward to seeing you there!
Programme highlights
Sat-Mon, 5 – 7 Apr, 2025
Design, Data and Beyond exhibition at Inspace features the work of Design Informatics MSc/MA students presenting a series of creative prototypes which explore their intergalactic connections of data, technology and matter and that reflect on human (and beyond human) experiences of the future.
Operation Biodegradable exhibition and event programme at Inspace presents artwork, artefacts and prototypes by staff, students and graduates at the University of Edinburgh inviting you to engage with and understand the challenges and potential solutions in designing an operating theatre that better supports surgeons and the environment.
Edinburgh Science Foundation is an educational charity, founded in 1989. Best known for organising Edinburgh’s annual Science Festival – the world’s first public celebration of science and technology as a festival – as well as their science education outreach programmes, Generation Science and Careers Hive and their community engagement work. Their mission is to inspire, encourage and challenge people of all ages and backgrounds to explore and understand the world around them.
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.
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.
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 exhibitionYou’re Not Aloneshowcases 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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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)
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.
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
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 Bates, Project 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.
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.
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.
