AI and Other Scientific Fables

This exploratory two-day symposium engages critically and creatively with the idea of the scientific fable and aims to establish a community in Australia around the topic of AI and literature. How does the literary form of the fable enable a type of speculation that is important to the practice of science? Equally, how have scientific understandings of nonhuman life inspired literary fables, particularly in the genres of fantastic and speculative fiction? How can we think about AI itself as a kind of fable involving human and nonhuman characters and perspectives?

This free, catered, in-person and online event is kindly supported by the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council and the AHRC project, “Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis”.

If you attend online, zoom link will be provided upon registration.

Agenda

Day 1. Thursday July 25

Location: Room 1.33 Level 1, ANU Birch Building

9.30-10am Welcome.

10-10.30am Session 1: Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker: Campfire (reading + talk)

10.30-11am Morning tea. Level 1 kitchen.

11am-12.30pm Session 2: Judith Bishop: Fables of the AI Child + Tyne Daile Sumner: Alice’s Adventures, Ambiguity & AI

12.30-1.30pm Lunch. 

1.30-3pm Session 3: Baylee Brits: Misalignment and the Fable + Monique Rooney: A Fable of a Narrating Brain in Andrea Long Chu’s “China Brain” (2021)

3-3.30pm Afternoon tea. 

3.30-5pm Session 4: Charles Paulk: Demonic Multitudes: Monstrous AI + Chris Danta: Fabulous Devourment in Philip K. Dick

Day 2. Friday July 26

Location: Innovation Space, Level 2, ANU Birch Building

9.30-11am Session 5: Sherryl Vint: Nephelokokkygia: Ecological Storytelling at the End of the World

11-11.30am Morning tea.

11.30am-1pm Session 6: Jasper Montana: Suzie and the Dark Vessels: Satellite Data, Environmental Subjects, and Fable in Ocean Governance + Isabel Richards and Ella McCarthy: Climate Change Fables and Their Calls to Action

1-2pm Lunch. 

2-3.30pm Session 7: Sarah Collins: “He’s not there. He doesn’t reflect”: The Mimetic Nonhuman in Hoffmann and Offenbach + Bridget Vincent: Klara and the Reader

3.30-4pm Afternoon tea.

4-4.30pm Session 8: Screening of Moonrise (2021; 11 minutes) and Requiem (2023; 16 minutes), two short films in the Archival Futures of Outer Space Film Quartet, co-created by Ceridwen Dovey & Rowena Potts.

4.30-5pm Wrap up.