A showcase of work from Edinburgh Futures Institute’s The New Real group – immerse yourself in The New Real and experience ground-breaking ideas for the arts and culture of tomorrow!
Join us on a trip to The New Real, as we look at how Artificial Intelligence interacts with people and the planet in fascinating and unanticipated ways, becoming a creative, playful and deep part of new artistic works and our everyday lives. Responding to EFI’s First Breath programme theme, discover how Art and Artificial Intelligence combine to fuel delightful new cultural experiences and help heal our planet in crisis.
Hear from leading international AI artists, designers and scientists how art and creativity can help to radically change how we think about AI design, to embrace human traits such as bias, disagreement, and uncertainty as a signal with creative potential rather than noise that needs to be removed. Gain insight into how our work is addressing the urgent need to tackle both energy intensive technologies and the disconnect between global climate information and people’s daily lives.
Following a Salon evening event, throughout the weekend an open Showcase exhibition explores the concept of ‘The New Real’, and the inflection that culture and society have gone through following the digital turn after Covid.
The New Real Salon Opening
28 October 19.00-21.00
Part of EFI’s inaugural event season, The New Real Gala will present international projects and practitioners, alongside highlights of our most recent research partnerships with artists and festivals. Leading contemporary AI artists, designers and scientists will explore the most transformative technologies out there and announce a major new programme on Next Generation Intelligent Experiences.
The New Real programme is a unique hub for AI, creativity and futures research. We believe the arts can be at the forefront of new sustainable industries and economies, and devise imaginative ways to experiment with new experiences, practices, infrastructures and business models, and to empower people to be agents of positive change.
Please note that this event will be recorded and the data used for research and promotional purposes. We will ask you for your written consent and on arrival at the event
This Gala event is free but ticketed. Capacity is limited so please book a ticket to secure your place.
Speakers
Prof Drew Hemment
Drew Hemment is The New Real’s project principal investigator. He is an artist, designer and academic researcher, Chancellors Fellow at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art and Research Fellow at The Turing.
Dr Matjaz Vidmar
Matjaz Vidmar is our co investigator, an interdisciplinary researcher, lecturer and strategist at the University of Edinburgh. He is an (Astro)Physicist by training, now examining innovation processes and (inter-)organisational learning and change, as well as other social dimensions of emerging technologies
Daga Panas
Dr. Daga Panas is part of our science and technology team. She is a Data Scientist at the University of Edinburgh, working in the Data Science Unit for Science, Health, People, and Environment. She holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience and an MSc in Physics and describes herself as an all-round-geek, when pressed to write in third person. She has a varied background, including, in no particular order: deploying Machine Learning in a business environment, guiding punting tours on the river Cam, and research on the benefits of naps (often conducted personally).
Alex Fefegha
Alex Fefegha works at the intersection of design, code, speculative fiction and art and has a habit of sharing ideas and projects in public as his works embody social issues and exposes the technological systems affecting us as individuals.
The New Real Showcase
29-30th Oct – 11.00-16.00 (drop in, no ticket required)
The New Real Showcase presents a suite of artworks and interactive exhibits from The New Real making the Artificial Intelligence systems more legible, transparent, fair, and environmentally sound through arts and design.
This Showcase comprises The New Real Observatory Platform, co-created by a team of scientists, artists, engineers and designers; and new horizons for creative machine learning tools and next generation intelligent experiences.
The New Real Observatory platform is combining machine learning processing engines with localised global climate data models.
Powered by its conceptual architecture, three artworks have been developed by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Kizziah McNeill, which investigate the entanglements of people, data, machines and environments.
The works are accompanied by interactive exhibits which engage audiences with research on future applications of AI in the creative sector as well as the border societal questions and implications of the future of emerging technologies.
Come along to be delighted and inspired by transformative ideas and creative insights into the intersection of art and AI.
Please note that the exhibition will be accompanied by opportunities to contribute to the research. We will ask you for your consent prior to any contributions you make being used as part of the research. Please speak to our research team should you have any questions
Artists
Inés Cámara Leret
Inés Cámara Leret (b.1990, Madrid) lives and works in London and Madrid. Cámara Leret is inspired by the transformative nature of materials, the methodologies used to understand these and the relations that arise. Exploring life through that which is unseen, portrayed as static or seemingly ephemeral, Cámara Leret works across disciplines. In doing so, Cámara Leret nurtures long-term collaborations that create expanded networks and bridge traditional and academic ways of knowing.
Keziah MacNeill
Keziah MacNeill is a Scottish artist and recent graduate from Edinburgh College of Art. Hosted by a photographic practice, her thoughts place themselves in a digital age where the remix, a regeneration of information, becomes default and acts of customisation become rewarding. She creates circuits of personalisation within the photographic process, employing structural and sonic adjustments to fabricate new darkroom personas. She travels through the infinite rhythm of regeneration; occasionally slowed down by the pot holes of indecision, and habitual detachment.
The New Real
Established in 2019, The New Real is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Alan Turing
Institute, and Edinburgh’s Festivals. It is hosted by Edinburgh Futures Institute and funded by UK Research and Innovation, Scottish Funding Council, Creative Scotland, and the Data Driven Innovation Programme.