Date
Tuesday 05 October 2021 -
19:00 to 20:30

Future Intelligence fest

The digitization of the arts, culture, entertainment and media sector points to a greater integration of autonomous processes. The incorporation of artificial intelligence can be seen in various aspects of the creative chain, from tools that assist artists, to dissemination platforms based on algorithms.

The Future Intelligence fest aims to create a space where mainly British and Spanish professionals, experts and artists can come together to exchange ideas on the practice and ethics of advanced technologies in the field of creation. 

This initiative by Fundación Telefónica and the British Council will take place in two parts over the next 6 months and will cover the main aspects of current trends in the integration of advanced technologies in the field of the arts.

The first part, taking place in October 5th, will introduce current advances in this field by the hand of two emblematic figures of creation and research from the UK:  the filmmaker and narrator of the future Karen Palmer; and the researcher and writer, Arthur I Miller. They will be accompanied by Miguel Espada de Espada y Santa Cruz, a studio specialized in the development of projects with advanced technologies for large international brands.

Karen Palmer

Karen Palmer is the narrator of the future. A multi-award-winning filmmaker and speaker, she has developed multiple responsive and adaptive film creations in real time based on the emotions of her viewers. Her creations are at the intersection of artificial intelligence, immersive storytelling, and neuroscience. Each of her works directly questions the conscience of the viewer and the implicit biases or prejudices that they may have. Her favorite topics include the democratization of Artificial Intelligence, the future of narratives, the transformative power of art and technology on cognitive behavior, or how Storytelling affects the narrative of reality.

Her latest installation is Perception iO, (Input Output), a pioneering robotics and artificial intelligence system for law enforcement. For this project, the viewers' perception (built from their emotional response and the movement of their eyes) as well as their potential biases become the training data for the Artificial Intelligence system. You can currently discover this work at the Cooper Hewitt Museum.

With her previous immersive film RIOT, she has developed a new narrative for the viewer to create their own story based on their own behavior analyzed by facial recognition and artificial intelligence technologies. Acclaimed by the international press (New York Times, Guardian, NBC, CBS), it has been presented at multiple festivals around the world such as SXSW Austin, or in museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Guest speaker at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris. She has offered multiple TEDx Talks in recent years to discuss the future of video games, cinema and more generally of our brain as the latest remote control.

Arthur I Miller

Arthur I. Miller is Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London. He took a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. From 1991 to 2005 he was Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London (UCL) and, in the same university, he helped restructure an academic unit that combines history and philosophy of science, sociology of science and scientific communication in order to create the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL. His field of research is at the intersection of creative practice, neuroscience and technology. 

Among his many books are Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art which describes how artists, scientists and technologists today work together to create a new spectrum of art. Science, engineering, computers, and algorithms inspire these artists, as do nature, with hate, love, and death. Instead of brush and chisel, today's artists use advanced technologies to aesthetically represent huge data sets, sculpt with sound, combine concepts of art with physics, or manipulate inert materials to create beautiful new shapes. After all, it's all about investigating what it means to be human when we can have technological implants or transplants of genes and organs produced by 3D printers.

His most recent book, The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity, invites us on a tour of art and culture in times of thinking machines. Today's computers compose music that sounds "more like Bach than Bach," turn photographs into Van Gogh-style paintings, and even write screenplays. But are computers really creative, or are they simply tools for musicians, artists, and writers to use?

More information: Future Intelligence fest