[Commlist] Conference: Artificial Atmospheres and Unexpected Media: Exploring Media Art and Machine Learning

Conference: Artificial Atmospheres and Unexpected Media: Exploring Media 
Art and Machine Learning

16–17 October 2024
NOVA University Lisbon
and Online

Free

For more information, full programme, and link for online:
https://ifilnova.pt/en/events/artificial-atmospheres-and-unexpected-media/ 
<https://ifilnova.pt/en/events/artificial-atmospheres-and-unexpected-media/>

About the Artificial Atmospheres and Unexpected Media: Exploring Media 
Art and Machine Learning conference:

Technology shapes our sensory experiences and extends our cognitive and 
bodily capabilities. Its pervasive influence coupled with the 
ever-expanding reach of artificial intelligence across diverse facets of 
society underscores the urgent need for comprehensive exploration, 
experimentation, and discussion. Machine learning advancements, while 
offering unprecedented tools and opportunities, also raises profound 
ethical dilemmas, blurring the boundaries between reality and 
artificiality. It is urgent that this technology be explored and 
experimented with and discussed from various angles.


This conference seeks to explore the intricate relationship between 
artistic expression and emerging media technologies, particularly 
focusing on machine learning and virtual environments. By scrutinizing 
this alliance, our aim is to unpack the myriad challenges and novel 
responses it presents to contemporary issues spanning ethical, social, 
political, and economic domains. The rapid evolution of Artificial 
Intelligence elicits a spectrum of reactions, ranging from utopian 
optimism to dystopian apprehension. Generative AI programs can be a 
useful tool for the artist, and simultaneously a threat to creative 
careers. Algorithmic technologies have the potential for AI models to 
generate creative content, or for creative users to generate 
“collaborations” with machines, such as transhumanist art, reflecting 
the ideas of Marshall McLuhan that technology is extending human bodies, 
reflecting a proactive vision of the future while attempting to address 
both the positive and negative impacts on society. We aim to delve into 
the creative intersections of media art, immersive technologies and 
virtual environments, and machine learning through the creative lens of 
the artist.


What virtues might survive or thrive in our art worlds through these 
changes?
What virtues may be retained and strengthened through artistic 
interventions and explorations of these changes?

Keynote Speaker

DANIEL CHÁVEZ HERAS is a lecturer in Digital Culture and Creative 
Computing in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College 
London. He specialises in the computational production and analysis of 
visual culture. His research combines critical frameworks in the history 
and theories of cinema, television, and photography, with advanced 
technical practice in creative and scientific computing, including 
applied machine learning technologies. Daniel has worked extensively in 
interdisciplinary design and creative industries, in Mexico and in the 
UK, with cultural institutions such as the British Council and the BBC. 
He is an affiliate of King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence, part 
of the Computational Humanities Group, and a member of the Creative AI 
Lab, in partnership with the Serpentine Galleries in London. His newest 
book is Cinema and Machine Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Aesthetics 
and Spectatorship, from Edinburgh University Press.

Invited Speakers/Artists

PABLO NÚÑEZ PALMA is an experimental filmmaker and independent 
researcher whose work investigates the intersection of new technologies 
with audiovisual archives. His latest projects seek to harness 
generative AI to support creative processes and explore ethical forms of 
human-machine co-authorship.


JAN BOT is a filmmaking bot that combines archival footage and 
algorithms to generate experimental videos based on two ingredients: 
found footage and today’s trending topics. Jan Bot was an artificial 
intelligence programme created by artists Bram Loogman and Pablo Núñez 
Palma in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum and support from the 
Netherlands Creative Industries Fund. Using some of the latest A.I. of 
its time, Jan Bot worked day and night producing poetic films inspired 
by current news and images from early cinema.


REBECCA BARON is a Los Angeles-based media artist known for her lyrical 
essay films which explore the construction of history, with a particular 
interest in still photography and its relationship to the moving image. 
Her work has screened widely at international film festivals and media 
venues including documenta 12, International Film Festival Rotterdam, 
New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Toronto Film Festival, 
London Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty Film Seminar, 
Viennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her films have received 
awards at the San Francisco, Black Maria, Montreal, Leipzig, Athens, 
Onion City, KIN, Sinking Creek and Ann Arbor Film Festivals. She is the 
recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Fellowship at the 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has taught documentary and 
experimental film at Massachusetts College of Art, Harvard University, 
and since 2000 at California Institute of the Arts. Early adopter. Web 
pioneer. Connoisseur of emerging technologies. Appreciator of systems. 
Collector of analog devices. Teacher of technology, high and low.


DOUGLAS GOODWIN is a technologist investigating the mechanisms by which 
language and other technologies mediate our perception of reality. 
Goodwin’s work has shown at many venues including the Toronto 
International Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, Ambulante, London 
Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Frankfurt Film Museum, SIGGRAPH, 
REDCAT, the Orphans Film Symposium, the Courtisane Festival, Eyebeam, 
and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. “Lossless”, a collaboration with Rebeca 
Baron, was the first digital work to enter the collection of the George 
Eastman House in Rochester, NY. He currently serves as the first 
Fletcher Jones Foundation Scholar in Computation and a Visiting 
Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College.


BUDHADITYA CHATTOPADHYAY is an artist, media practitioner, researcher, 
and writer. Incorporating diverse media, creative technologies and 
research, Chattopadhyay produces works for large-scale installation and 
live performance addressing contemporary issues of environment and 
ecology, migration, race and decoloniality. Chattopadhyay has received 
numerous residencies, fellowships, and international awards, e.g. PRIX 
Ars Electronica 2011, Computer Space Festival 2014, Confluence 2021. His 
works have been widely exhibited, performed or presented across the 
globe, and released by Gruenrekorder (DE) and Touch (UK). Chattopadhyay 
has an expansive body of scholarly publications in the areas of media 
art history, theory and aesthetics, cinema and sound studies in leading 
peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of four books including The 
Nomadic Listener (2020), The Auditory Setting (2021), and Between the 
Headphones (2021). Chattopadhyay holds a PhD in Artistic Research and 
Sound Studies from Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden 
University, and an MA in New Media from the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus 
University.


JOEL KRUEGER* is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University 
of Exeter. He works in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy 
of cognitive science: specifically, issues in 4E (embodied, embedded, 
enacted, extended) cognition, including emotions, social cognition, 
loneliness, and psychopathology. He also writes about comparative 
philosophy and philosophy of music. He is an Associate Editor of 
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and Passion: Journal of the 
European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE).


*by special invitation and support from the exploratory research project 
GENAI.

Location

Colégio Almada Negreiros (Campus Campolide)
NOVA FCSH (Campus Berna)
Zoom


Conference organisers: Patrícia Castello Branco (CineLab — IFILNOVA); 
Maile Colbert (CineLab — IFILNOVA).


About IFILNOVA/CineLab’s working group in Art and Technology:
The Art and Technology working group focuses on exploring the 
relationships between artistic practices and the development of new 
technologies. Its main aim is to critically analyze, assess and discuss 
the ways the alliance between art and technology poses new challenges 
and offers new ways to respond to contemporary issues related to social, 
political, and economic paradigms, such as social justice, ecological 
sustainability, and economic development.


Event supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação 
para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia) of the Portuguese Ministry of 
Education and Science under the projects UIDB/00183/2020 and 
UIDP/00183/2020, and by NOVA FCSH within the scope of the ArgLab 
exploratory research project “(GENAI) Ensuring Human Cognitive 
Flourishing against the background of GENerative AI: sustaining deep 
minds within our new cognitive ecology”.


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