Abstract: What happens to all those digital records and pilot projects that end too soon? Do they simply disappear, or do they lie dormant, waiting to be reactivated? Is there a kind of cemetery for digital artifacts created by failed public innovation projects, or do these artifacts hibernate, ready to resurface? What do we do with discarded platforms, prototypes, and interfaces that continue to linger online, gradually forming an informational geology with latent, volcano-political potential? We examine the case of thousands of video recordings of judicial hearings stored on platforms like Facebook or YouTube, remnants of Facebook Live’s streaming service once used by the Chilean judiciary. This innovation allowing users to comment on these judicial hearings livestreams was shut down after a prosecutor’s private address was widely shared among thousands of comments, leading to armed right-wing groups showing up at her home to threaten her and her family. By viewing public innovation as radically open-ended, we propose that citizens and communities might appropriate, remix, and reinterpret these recordings from past innovation projects. These abandoned digital layers become raw material for political action, allowing new meanings to emerge from public trials and reconfiguring notions of justice in unexpected ways. Our proposal for an archaeology of public innovation opens up new forms of political action at a time when public institutions, like the judiciary, may appear increasingly ruined by the innovation imperatives.

Course Outline: Feminist Hacking Strategies focuses on socio-technical, sustainable, critical and creative artistic activities. The course is multimodal, and is welcoming hands-on - practical and theoretical - discursive approach. It brings attention to DYI culture, feminist AI, body/identity hacking, performativity in practical and theoretic research.

The course aims to focus on divergent approaches in conceptualising, developing and contextualising participant’s practices, creating a platform for the students to exchange and openly discuss ideas and concepts, make hands-on prototyping and showcasing their work, and spark curiosity through examples, as well as tracing academic research, emergent technologies and contemporary media art and culture.
In accordance to the individual/group’s needs it will encourage and support their practices, in artistic or theoretical research both for students who are encountering this field for the first time, as well as the students who are fully engaged in some of the feminist hacking practices. Regardless of the previous knowledge, this course encourages the participants to engage in conversation and exchange providing different perspectives on the field. It is established as an environment for mutual understanding in which students are enabled to express and develop their concepts, artistic identities and introspective, (self-)reflective approach in their practices.

Yiannis Colakides, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Caterina Antonopoulou, Laddy Patricia Cadavid Hinojosa, Matthew W. Harkness, Yue-Jin Ho, Garrett Laroy Johnson, Emily Lawhead, Stelios Manousakis, Hamilton Mestizo, Oliver Palmer, Noor Stenfert Kroese, Abram Stern, Kristina Tica, Elia Vargas; Top-Rated LGA Abstracts 2023. Leonardo 2024; 57 (5): 540–546.

doi: 10.1162/leon_a_02565

Abstract
This master thesis is developed as an artistic practical and theoretical research, established at an intersection of computational image-making and image-reading processes, and their aesth-ethics in a broader socio-technical environment. The presentation of my artistic research, along with relevant projects in the same field, will be followed by a theoretical discussion on the ontology of a digital, computer-generated image, its aesthetics and ethics within underlying ideologies in the discourse of their representation - between their content and context. The discussion is located on the axis between the image analysis and synthesis processes elaborated through the implementation of machine learning-based tools.
The analysis in this research goes beyond the representational surface of the image, articulating the history of artificial intelligence and computer-generated images, correlations and oppositions between the affordance of the medium, tools and their syntax, and their limits of creativity within the context of critical data and image semiotics. Through a selected series of three projects: Digital Prayer (2020), FUTUREFALSEPOSITIVE (2021), and PROMPT: WAR STORIES (2022), the concept and the approach in using different machine learning-based tools will be elaborated, defining the threshold between the human agency and algorithmic automation.
The epistemology of computed, statistical images is disseminated through their aesthetics of representation, carrying an ideology of 'thoughtlessness by automation’, examining the balances of co-creation between the human and the machine - determining agency,  against metaphors, fantasy and mystification; probability and prediction. Between optimisation and accuracy, quantity and quality, universality and uniqueness, this research underline artistic examples and theoretical concepts that address the importance of human agency in the age of automation. Paradigms of development and integration of machine learning systems on a political, social and ethical scale can be understood through the artistic appropriation of these tools.
From the database to the combinatorial infinity and statistical transcendence, the critical points between the spectacle and backstage resources of statistical art will be extracted, observing the image behind the image, and the datasets beyond the computation. The semiotic interplay between the content and context becomes necessary to address responsibility and visibility, so as to better understand not only the technologies but the systemic structures, along with the ideologies, that lie behind them.

Keywords/Fields of Study : machinic vision, image-making, image-reading, database, automated creativity, aesth-ethics, generative ideology, algorithmic thoughtlessness, algorithmic culture, demystification

Link to Full Thesis (link is external), 148 pages, written in English 
copyright CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International

Leonardo Abstracts Service Directory

This master thesis is developed as an artistic practical and theoretical research, established at an intersection of computational image-making and image-reading processes, and their aesth-ethics in a broader socio-technical environment. The presentation of my artistic research, along with relevant projects in the same field, will be followed by a theoretical discussion on the ontology of a digital, computer-generated image, its aesthetics and ethics within underlying ideologies in the discourse of their representation - between their content and context. The discussion is located on the axis between the image analysis and synthesis processes elaborated through the implementation of machine learning-based tools.

The analysis in this research goes beyond the representational surface of the image, articulating the history of artificial intelligence and computer-generated images, correlations and oppositions between the affordance of the medium, tools and their syntax, and their limits of creativity within the context of critical data and image semiotics. Through a selected series of three projects: Digital Prayer (2020), FUTUREFALSEPOSITIVE (2021), and PROMPT: WAR STORIES (2022), the concept and the approach in using different machine learning-based tools will be elaborated, defining the threshold between the human agency and algorithmic automation.

The epistemology of computed, statistical images is disseminated through their aesthetics of representation, carrying an ideology of 'thoughtlessness by automation’, examining the balances of co-creation between the human and the machine - determining agency, against metaphors, fantasy and mystification; probability and prediction. Between optimisation and accuracy, quantity and quality, universality and uniqueness, this research underline artistic examples and theoretical concepts that address the importance of human agency in the age of automation. Paradigms of development and integration of machine learning systems on a political, social and ethical scale can be understood through the artistic appropriation of these tools.

From the database to the combinatorial infinity and statistical transcendence, the critical points between the spectacle and backstage resources of statistical art will be extracted, observing the image behind the image, and the datasets beyond the computation. The semiotic interplay between the content and context becomes necessary to address responsibility and visibility, so as to better understand not only the technologies but the systemic structures, along with the ideologies, that lie behind them.

Keywords: machinic vision, image-making, image-reading, database, automated creativity, aesth-ethics, generative ideology, algorithmic thoughtlessness, algorithmic culture, demystification

This research paper is established on theory and critical artistic thinking on the ontology of computational image processing, underlying discourse of their representation — between their content and context. The research is located on the axis between the image analysis and synthesis processes developed on machine learning-based tools. Examining modalities for understanding the zeitgeist of computational imagery offered in algorithmic models is needed to align and locate our own position — to draw the line where human agency stops and automation begins. Also, to determine if there is such a threshold at all - blending the feedback loop between the user and the machine. Automation is a collective effort, and claiming back the totality of our agency rather than dispersion into particularisation — to see a world in a grain of sand — we have to detect the structures of the network we are part of.
This research extracts the visual aspect of the experience and agency in the production and contextualisation of automated image processing. In the pervasiveness of visual communication, visual culture should be equally important.

Keywords: Computational Image, Image Analysis, Image Synthesis, Automated Creativity, Ideology of Prediction, Colonised Imagination.

Understanding the differences between the content and the context, this research is located on the axis between image-making and image-reading, through tools and technologies that fit under the term of machine learning, such as styleGAN and object recognition. The ontology of computed, technical images (Flusser, 1983) should not rely on its representative content, carrying an ideology of 'thoughtlessness by automation’ (McQuillan, 2015). Through examples in personal artistic and theoretical research, the correlations and oppositions between the affordance of the medium, tools and their syntax, the limits of creativity and its semiotics are being articulated. Paradigms of development and integration of machine learning systems on a political, social and ethical scale, can be understood through the artistic appropriation of these tools. Development of these systems is dependent on human agency, yet this agency has become invisible within a plurality that claims totality. From the database, to the combinatorial transcendency and statistical infinity - the critical points between the spectacle and backstage resources will be extracted. Going over the Hype Cycle, towards the ‘thorough of disillusionment’ (Gartner, 2018), it becomes necessary to address responsibility, to provide a better understanding of not only the technologies but the systemic structures that rely on them, along with the ideologies that lie behind.

What does it mean to be seen by machines and can we trust machine vision?
How do technologies discriminate and what impact is this having on people?

Artists have historically experimented with human perception and utilised the ways in which people see things differently, but what are the implications of artistic practices which incorporate the technologies of machine learning?

Join us for this online event reflecting on the politics, social outcomes and power dynamics at play in working with AI. Over the course of the evening three artists will present their work: Kin (Cultura Plasmic INC), Sophie Hoyle and Kristina Tica. The presentations will be followed by a conversation chaired by curator, educator and agitator Dr Cecilia Wee and a Q&A with the audience.

...This obscure object of desire has its limits of interaction as its strongest trait. You may feel rejected, irrelevant, disappointed in your efforts. Your affection projected on this digital face is hitting you back with its ignorance hidden below appealing artificial facial features and overly mannered gestures. What can such a simulation teach us about us, about the psychological and social structures of our everyday life on the screen? What are the possible ways to articulate the position of women in the global society created on the web? What are our limits that we want to expand in the realm of the virtual word, and what are the structures that are constructed within that world that are important to question from the female perspective?

This volume is dedicated to the incredibly fast development of Artificial Intelligence. European ARTificial Intelligence Lab approaches the complex topic in The Practice of Art and AI and provides insight into previous projects in the field of art and AI.

Since 1979 ARS ELECTRONICA has tracked and analyzed the digital revolution and its multiple impacts. The focus has always been on processes and trends combining art, technology, and society. Results of this artistic and scientific research can be seen in the form of an annual festival in Linz, Austria, where a five-day-long program involves conferences, podium discussions, workshops, exhibitions, performances, interventions, and concerts. The festival is planned, organized, and executed in collaboration with artists and scientists from around the world. A variety of controversial futuristic themes are always the center of attention.

poster design: Luka Jendrišek

Follow the Current is a panel discussion established among young artists and researches from four cities connected by the current of the river Danube – Linz, Vienna, Novi Sad and Belgrade. The representatives come from group of artists and researches from each city, presenting five main projects:
Interface Cult, group show – Sara Koniarek (AT) and Barbara Jazbec (SI/AT), Linz; Woodiana Oracle and Anatomy of Fatberg – Alexandra Fruhstorfer (AT), Lena Violetta Leitner (AT), Ege Kökel (AT/TR), Solmaz Farhang (UK/IR/AT), Vienna and Sanja Anđelković (RS), Jovana Pešić (RS), Andrea Palašti (RS), Novi Sad; Aerosonar and Digital Prayer – Marija Šumarac (RS), Belgrade. The moderator and creator of this panel discussion is Kristina Tica (RS/AT), Belgrade – Linz, also author of Digital Prayer.

In the discussion, they will present their current projects that intersect between the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, environmental and technological issues. The aim is to exchange and communicate through common goals, questions and insights achieved while working with similar tools and technologies in various directions and environments. The discussion will follow the exchange of insights into their methods of acquiring knowledge, methods of creative expression, but also the critical points that we face on local and global scales that are being articulated into artistic research projects. Art’s multiple intelligences will be discussed, in contexts of realities and speculations, imagination and protocols from personal, intimate, to institutional scale.
The goal of this panel is to create an intersection of the key concepts that these young artists/ researchers are driven by, in each city, in both local and global environment and context. This offers a chance to understand better what are the current and future aspirations, concerns, inspirations and problems to solve for the generation that is about to take the role of a protagonist in solving tomorrow’s challenges of our technoecologies.