Part 1: A Weekend Proposition

Exploring the interconnection between art and machine learning. Participants will learn how certain ML models work, play with them in creative/critical ways, and contextualize them to make better sense of an algorithmic paradigm. We will kick off the weekend in downtown LA with an evening panel discussion and social, followed by 1.5 days of workshops at UCLA's campus in Westwood. Join us—everything is free of charge thanks to grants!

Experimental Digital Arts Room (EDA)
Broad Art Center, 1250
University of California, Los Angeles
240 Charles E Young Dr N
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Workshop
The Neural Aesthetic
Gene Kogan

A coding/art workshop equipping participants with the skills to better understand and work creatively with machine learning models.

10am - 1pm - Session 1
1pm - 2pm - Lunch break
2pm - 5pm - Session 2

Gene Kogan is an artist and a programmer who is interested in autonomous systems, collective intelligence, generative art, and computer science. Gene initiated ml4a, a free book about machine learning for creative practice.

Workshop
Myths of the Near Future
Lou Cantor

An art/writing workshop speculating on the social repercussions of AI.

12pm - 1:30pm - Session 1
1:30pm - 2:00pm - Break
2:00pm - 3:30pm - Session 2

Research Charette
Patent Expressions
Blaine O'Neill & Ulysses Pascal

3:30pm - 4:30pm

Talk
#BrownUpYourFeed
Mandy Harris Williams

4:30pm - 5:30pm

Panel
Scripting the Human
Lou Cantor (moderator)
Hannah Black
Lucky Dragons
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian

6:00pm - 7:00pm

Lou Cantor is a Berlin-based artist collective founded in 2011, whose main scope of interest is grounded in intersubjectivity and interpersonal communication.

Mandy Harris Williams is a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, radio host and internet/community academic.

Hannah Black is an artist and writer from the UK, living and working in New York. Her work spans video, text and performance and draws on communist, feminist, and afropessimist theory, autobiographical fragments, and pop music.

lucky dragons is an ongoing collaboration between Los Angeles-based artists Sarah Rara and Luke Fischbeck. They research forms of participation and dissent, purposefully working towards a better understanding of existing ecologies through performances, publications, recordings, and public art.

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is a writer and artist who received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, and currently works as a Senior Researcher in AI Ethics. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Art in America, and Performance Research Journal.