Art Performances and Presentations
26 April | 5.30 pm | Chair: Stephen Cave | Venue: Frankopan Hall
Presentation 1: Post-modern dance performance and a group conversation about responsible design and social impact of AI
Presenter: Betsy Campbell
Abstract: This is an artistic intervention. Building on the dance work that I am doing as a Fellow with the Edgelands Institute, I will present a post-modern dance, and I will guide a group conversation about responsible design and social impact of AI. The choreography has been built from the gestures of ordinary people (in the US, Europe, and South America) as they consider the impact of AI on daily life as well as the gestures of technologists as they strive to enact responsible design. (For more on post-modern dance, see Cunningham's "50 Looks".) The moves of the dance are suitable for every body; no special dance skills are needed and everyone regardless of age or ability can participate. Because dance is not a verbal means of communication, it transcends language differences. It provides an embodied means for people to experience the perspectives of other people. Dance – especially post-modern dance -- provides a unifying platform to discover different priorities and perceptions. Dance can alert people to other ways of knowing and sensitize them to other people’s concerns. Improving people’s awareness of experiences beyond their own is a foundational step towards more socially just AI design practices. After watching the dance, audience members in pairs/small groups will be asked to try on one or more of the moves from the dance. After doing the move, they will be asked to discuss what the gesture expresses and why someone might be feeling that way in conjunction with AI. Drawing on the theories and methods of dance anthropology, this work integrates concepts such as embodiment and kinesthesia in order to support more inclusive design practices in AI. As such, the project offers a new approach to addressing issues of social justice in AI design practices.
Author bio: An ethnomethodologist and artist, Dr. Betsy Campbell studies the practices of innovation teams. She is a Fulbright Specialist and the winner of two Academy of Management awards for her research and teaching related to social justice in innovation contexts. In 2022-23, she is a Fellow with the Edgelands Institute where she is using the arts to advance research on the responsible design and social impact of AI. Earlier in her career, Campbell founded high-tech companies, helped create a business unit within an established company (acquired by Lucent for $1.5B), and launched a 501(c)(3) (Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs) which she grew to over 5,000 members worldwide before leaving to get her PhD. She also was the co-director for the MIT Community Innovation Lab. She is the author of several books – including Practice Theory in Action and The Innovator's Discussion -- as well as plays for the stage. She is an affiliate of the Penn State Arts and Design Research Incubator, an appointed director to the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Alumni Council, and an active member of the Explorers Club. In the past, she has had a residency at Jacob's Pillow, served as a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center, and been an invited participant in the Smithsonian Apollo Dialogues workshop.
Presentation 2: ΑΠΟαποικιοΠΟΙΗΣΗ: Decolonising Cypriot AI through poetry
Presenters: Alexia Achilleos, Spyros Armostis, Eleftheria Sokratous
Abstract: ΑΠΟαποικιοΠΟΙΗΣΗ (APOapikioPIISI), a word-play between the Greek words “decolonisation” (αποαποικιοποίηση) and “poetry” (ποίηση), is an artistic investigation on the topics of colonialism/decolonisation in Cyprus, in both historical and digital context. It is concerned with the compilation of a community-created corpus of written Cypriot Greek (CyGr), and the subsequent publication of a poetry collection, through the collaboration of 9 writers with a custom-trained Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI model, GPT-2. This presentation will provide an overview of the project’s process, challenges, and results, from consenting data collection practices, to co-authoring poetry with the CyGr NLP model. An important challenge was that CyGr is a non-standard language variety with no officially codified writing system and with limited language resources; to reduce “noise” in our data, we had to homogenise the orthography of the created corpus. Another challenge was the ethical dilemma of whether or not to allow open access to the corpus of a language variety that is globally spoken by a small population (therefore, not profitable) and that has been stigmatised by hegemonic narratives. The project aims to contribute to the de-stigmatisation of CyGr and the spreading of a more systematic homogeneous way of spelling. It also aims to provide technological agency to an island on the peripheries of the global AI infrastructure, where the legacies of colonialism are still evident. While Cyprus is currently at the early stages of adopting AI technologies, ΑΠΟαποικιοΠΟΙΗΣΗ attempts to sow the first seeds towards a framework of what a decolonised Cypriot AI could look like from a local perspective, and open a dialogue about the role and influence of AI in our lives. It also provides an opportunity for CyGr speakers to interact with technology in the language variety they use in their daily lives.
Author bios: Alexia Achilleos is an artist, with a background in fine art, archaeology and cultural studies. She is currently a PhD Fellow at CYENS - Centre of Excellence, undertaking artistic research on colonialism and AI, as well as a Research Associate at the Media Art & Design Research Lab (MADLab) at Cyprus University of Technology. Alexia is interested in the social, cultural, and political issues that impact narrative and power dynamics. By investigating data and utilising machine learning processes, often in a historical context, she aims to re-examine such issues found within history and society, but also within AI technology itself, particularly challenging the idea of technology as universal and objective. Her work has been exhibited at institutions and conferences such as NeMe Arts Centre, World Intellectual Property Organisation, Forking room/Post Territory Ujeongguk and NeurIPS.
Spyros Armostis is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. He holds an MPhil and PhD in Linguistics(Phonetics) from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Classics from the University of Cyprus. His publications lie mainly in the fields of phonetics, phonology, variational sociolinguistics, and clinical linguistics. His research activities have also expanded to other areas, such as grapholinguistics, language documentation and revitalisation and second language acquisition. Focal points of his work have been the study of Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Arabic as well as of other varieties, such as Standard Modern Greek, Pontic Greek, English, and French. Finally, he is the Coordinator of the Cy[Φ] Lab (Cyprus PhoneticsLaboratory), Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus.
The NGO “Ipogia Skini”, began its activity in 2011 with nomadic type of cultural activities until 2014, when it found shelter in a rural space in the centre of Limassol. This space is called Synergeio and it serves as a basis for creating as well as producing the cultural projects of the NGO. Since its establishment, Synergeio has hosted all the theatre productions of the NGO Ipogeia Skini and its Performing Arts Festival “Sinaxis” for the past four years. Beyond its own Productions, Synergeio provides shelter to local and international artists/art groups who have a vision to create beyond the given structures, to research and experiment with new ideas and artistic trends. In addition, Synergeio is today a meeting point in the city centre. A space which is open to citizens’ initiatives for cultural and social action that promotes a form of art that evolves from solidarity as well as through the reflection of everyday life.
Presentation 3: Cultural Memory: Artistic Experiments in AI
Presenter: Yasmine Boudiaf
Abstract: A series of artistic research projects exploring cultural (dis)connections across time and geography using AI and anti-colonial methods. As an Algerian and a creative technologist, Yasmine explores how she and other displaced peoples could reconnect with intangible heritage, reviving and contextualising shared cultural memories as well as building new collective approaches to AI practice. This presentation spotlights three of Yasmine’s current projects: 1) An Algerian Techno-Ritual How can auto-ethnographic visual art be made without reproducing the colonial gaze? Using AI as a digital witness, producing meaning from aesthetics while rejecting biometric data capture and surveillance culture through a set of AI-generated face filters that echo the aesthetic of Algerian face tattoos. 2) Mediterranean Hand Gestures This interactive project uses a camera to detect hand gestures and audio to produce corresponding verbal sounds. Yasmine was inspired to create a system that can preserve and demonstrate common Mediterranean hand gestures, capturing the meanings of these non-verbal expressions of emotion before they are forgotten. 3) AI Justice Matrix: The Futility of Policy Craft An online platform and collaborative authorship project that invites the perspectives of practitioners concerned with our relationship with technology, developed as part of Yasmine’s JUST AI fellowship at the Ada Lovelace Institute. Fundamentally, this project refutes the notion that effective policy making, as it relates to AI ethics, is at all possible. It acts as a critique of Euro-centric knowledge processes and the way they manifest as curated information flows passing though sanctioned knowledge keepers. It treats all sources and expression of knowledge as valid. It offers issues to consider when contemplating AI practice without necessarily offering an answer.
Author bio: Yasmine is a researcher and creative technologist. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Ada Lovelace Institute, researching anti-colonial ethics for artificial intelligence. She was named as one of '100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2022'. She is currently collaborating with the CSNI at South Bank University and The Photographer's Gallery on an Alan Turing Institute funded project on visual cultures and computer vision and has recently published a paper on ethnic disparities in higher education in England, which was featured in the Times Higher Education. She has researched and taught at universities in the UK and Sweden. Her creative and consultancy projects are listed on her website: https://yasmine-boudiaf.com/.