Tag Archives: Culture

Gayle Chong Kwan: Oneiric Archaeologies

Gayle Chong Kwan is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and academic whose work is exhibited internationally in galleries and the public realm. Her large-scale photographic works, immersive installations, and sensory ritual events are at the intersection of historical and archival research and fine art practice, and position the viewer as one element in a cosmology of the political, social and ecological. She has created a new installation work, ‘Oneiric Archaeologies’, in VR game design, sound, tactile wearable sculptures, and social dreaming to explore the collective re-shaping, re-use, and understanding of Avebury Neolithic site through dreaming.

If we fully engage with how generative AI works, we can still create original art

Dr Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture (Birmingham City University), where his research and teaching focuses on practice-based research, Artificial Intelligence (AI), computer vision and machine learning, digital methodologies, and post-disciplinary models of knowledge production.
Anthony’s most recent book, ‘Trevor Paglen: Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations’ (Sternberg Press, 2024), outlines the extent to which so-called “hallucinations” reveal systemic biases in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Recent and forthcoming publications include ‘Decolonizing Vision: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Anxieties & Aerial Warfare’ (MIT Press, 2026); ‘Creative Endings: Visual Cultures, Generative Artificial Intelligence, and the Return of the Uncanny’ (Routledge Companion to Visual Culture, 2026); ‘AI as Alibi: Algorithmic Models of Automated Death’ (Digital War, 2025); ‘Algorithmic Predictions and Pre-emptive Violence’ (Digital War, 2024) and ‘The Return of the Uncanny: Artificial Intelligence and Estranged Futures’ (Visual Studies, 2024). Anthony is currently co-editing the first Special Journal Collection on AI and Memory for Memory, Mind & Media (Cambridge University Press).
Anthony sits on the editorial boards of Third Text (Routledge), Digital War (Palgrave Macmillan), Memory, Mind & Media (Cambridge University Press) and is the founder and series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press).

The Art-Science Symbiosis

‘The Art-Science Symbiosis’ book outlines new approaches to understand current scientific practice in general and art-science in particular, showcasing how contemporary art can provide a unique perspective on the meaning and potential of collaboration. The book explores the different scopes of the art- science practice and 22 art-science works from all over the world, including interviews and descriptions by the same art-scientists.

The whole story of human evolution – from ancient apes via Lucy to us

John Gowlett is Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool.

A British Archaeologist born in the Isle of Man, based in the University of Liverpool, he is collaborating with colleagues on projects in Kenya. He has worked on archaeological sites around the world for many years, and has particular interests in fire and in the evolution of form in tools. He is currently mainly involved with research on the extinct volcano of Kilombe in Kenya, which has a record 2 million years long.

Vital Signs: another world is possible

‘Vital Signs: another world is possible’ is Science Gallery London’s new, free exhibition and events programme. It brings together artists, designers and researchers to explore how the health of the natural world is intimately connected to our own health and wellbeing from the waterways and atmosphere to the ocean floor. Revealing unique perspectives on our surrounding environments through multimedia installations, research collaborations and A Living Library, Vital Signs reinforces that humans are fundamentally a part of nature rather than apart from it.

Contemplating Oblivion

Keith Wiley was one of the original members of MURG, the Mind Uploading Research Group, an online community dating to the mid-90s that discussed issues of consciousness with an aim toward mind uploading. He has written a previous book, ‘A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading’, about the philosophical interpretation of mind uploading, various invited book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, and magazine articles, in addition to several essays on a broad array of topics.

On ‘The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World’

Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer and former editor of frieze magazine. Her books include ‘The Other Side: A Story of Women, Art and the Spirit World’ (2023), ‘The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of women’s self-portraits’ (2021), the children’s book, which she also illustrated, ‘There’s Not One’ (2017), and the novel ‘Bedlam’ (2007) She was the guest curator of the 2023 exhibition Thin Skin at Monash University Art Museum in Melbourne and is the host of the National Gallery of Australia’s new podcast, Artist’s Artists.

Duchamp and Infinity

The art of Marcel Duchamp is notable for its thematic repetition, notably that of Eros. The infinity symbol, ∞, is a more specific throughline, appearing in works by or associated with Duchamp from 1921 onwards. The concept of infinity has three primary applications: the mathematical, the physical, and the metaphysical. With respect to Duchamp, the authors analyse mathematical applications via the Möbius strip and Klein bottle. They investigate physical manifestations of infinity via Duchamp’s La Bagarre d’Austerlitz (1921) and Anémic Cinéma (1926). The infinity symbols in a diagram representing Adam and Eve developed with Georges Bataille, published in Duchamp’s satirical journal ‘Mémento Universel Da Costa’ (1949), serve to clarify metaphysical aspects. For Marcel Duchamp, creativity was Erotism, a psychological and spiritual quest for continuity, infinity.

On the relationship between AI, Human and Art.

Freddie Hong is a London-based researcher and computational artist. His work delves into the impact of emerging technology on our relationships with the physical world and society. With a PhD in the advanced manufacturing of interactive devices, he has critical insights into merging art and technology. Through interactive art installations and performances, Freddie explores the boundaries between authorship and control in Human-Computer Interaction. He is interested in capturing the current issues in digital technologies and creates compelling interactive artworks that encourage participants to experiment with “intelligent things,” fostering conversations about the role of digital agents in our lives. Freddie is currently a resident researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he focuses on robotics research within the CRAFT group (Creative Robotics and Future Technologies).