Utopia or Oblivion: Crafting Human-Centered Technological Futures
Tio’tia:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 – Last April Milieux Institute announced its participation in the MUTEK Forum, an international gathering and marketplace of ideas for digital culture, art, technology and society. Today, MUTEK announced the programming of its 10th edition, and Milieux is proud to unveil its contribution in this four-day event taking place from August 20th to August 23rd at Monument-National.
This year’s theme “Utopia or Oblivion: Crafting Human-Centered Technological Futures”, calls for a critical reflection of what it means to be human in a hyper-connected world. It brings together artists, digital experts, and innovators to explore the shifting role of technology in current sociocultural transformations. Prompted by its utopian essence, the Forum will continue its explorations of artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), sustainability, music and gaming towards new future trajectories.
This 10th edition of the Forum will convene 90 international experts to take part in 60 talks, provocations, workshops and labs. Milieux Institute will participate on both the first and last day of the Forum.
Tuesday, August 20 | Into the Wild: Towards AI Ecologies
On August 20th, Milieux Associate Director Dr. Alice Jarry will discuss with artist Adam Basanta, electronic musician and researcher Beth Coleman and Matthieu Lorain about the evolution of generative AI. Titled “Into the Wild: Designing AIs in Retrograde” the event will invite participants to discuss how the glitches observed in the early days of generative AI (half a decade ago) have opened avenues for artistic exploration. The critical discussion on wild Ais will continue on the following Friday, last day of the Forum as part of the Wilding AI Lab.
Friday, August 23 | Resonant Futures: Shaping a More Equitable Future in Music and Technology
Milieux Institute will be actively involved on the final day of the Forum, engaging in discussions centered around “Resonant Futures: Shaping a More Equitable Future in Music and Technology”. Abundant Intelligences research group and Indigenous Future Research Director, Jason Edward Lewis, will explore culturally-grounded AI systems that support Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous ways of knowing (IK).
In collaboration with the Applied AI Institute, Milieux will also co-present the inaugural “Wilding AI Lab”, a day-long series of experiment for artists, researchers, students and audiences in making AI wild again. Located in the Studio Hydro Quebec, the lab offers an open space for people to meet, exchange ideas, and discover the lab’s various artistic and technological experiments, interventions and provocations. The inaugural cohort of the MachineAgencies GenAI Studio will take part in the event, allowing participants to interact hands-on with a variety of artistic prototypes utilizing tinyML and embodied AI technologies.
Full program here: https://forum.mutek.org/
