Collaborating with Machines

How can artists be friends with machines? While the threats and risks associated with the rise of AI to contemporary art are serious and a full discussion is warranted, are there alternative - potentially more generative - ways of thinking through our artistic entanglement with algorithms? What might a conscious systems engagement look, sound and feel like for artists (and audiences)? 

This event brings together artists and musicians who explore these and other questions involved in exploring non-self agencies and/or collaborating artistically with machines. The day will begin with granular synthesis demonstrations, include a talk and open discussion about artists working with machines, and conclude with (somewhat) musical electronic performances involving technological collaborations.

“Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections - and it matters which ones get made and unmade.” – Donna Haraway

Program:

Stephen Atkinson


Live improvisational performance with discarded mechanical and electronic devices.

Phantom Chips (Tara Pattendom)


Live electronic performance using wearable sound and custom-built electronic circuits.

John Ferguson


Talk on imagined agency and the role of resistance and inertia in performing technologies.

Alex Grant


Talk exploring anthroponormativity, machine cognition and the decentring of human authorship in contemporary art.

Tara Pattendom


Talk on how AI, generative learning and custom-built technologies can enable access and active creative participation for people with disabilities.

Marian Sandberg


Talk reflecting on shared creative agency with non-human systems, including working with machines as tools, collaborators and authors.

Granulator synthesiser workshop participants (Cultivating Electronic Music in Regional Australia, ARC research project)


Demonstrations of newly built granulator synthesiser instruments.

Image: Tara Pattenden, 'Phantom Chips' (2023), Papiripar Festival. Photography by Claudia Höhne.