Annual AI Symposium
AI and Creative Innovation:
Advocating for Artists and Designers
Join us at Ringling College of Art and Design for “AI and Creative Innovation: Advocating for Artists and Designers” on September 13-14, 2024. This two-day event is dedicated to supporting artists and designers as they navigate the ethical, legal, and industry concerns posed by artificial intelligence. Our mission is to advocate for and empower creatives, ensuring they have the tools and knowledge to thrive in the AI era while facing the challenges created by emerging technologies.
Event Details:
Dates:
September 13-14, 2024
Location:
Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL
Registration:
$199
Join us for an enriching experience that promises to inspire, educate, and empower the creative community as we confront the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by AI in the world of art and design.
Keynote Insights:
Hear from expert speakers who will share their expertise on how AI can foster creative innovation while safeguarding artistic integrity.
Engaging Panels:
Participate in in-depth discussions on the ethical use of AI, the legal implications for artists, and strategies for maintaining control over creative work in an AI-driven world.
Hands-On Workshops:
Gain practical experience with AI tools designed for artists, learn methods to protect your art from unauthorized AI use, and collaborate on forward-thinking AI-driven projects.
Networking Opportunities: Connect with fellow artists, educators, professionals, and AI researchers to exchange ideas and form valuable collaborations.
Art Show Opening: Celebrate the opening of the Ringling College Galleries and Exhibitions Artificial Visions: Faculty Explorations in AI Artistry show, featuring food, drinks, and a showcase of innovative AI-integrated artworks.
Artists and Designers:
Discover how AI can be a new medium for artistic expression and learn strategies to protect and enhance your creative work.
Educators and Faculty:
Gain insights into cutting-edge AI applications to enrich your teaching and professional practice.
Students and Emerging Professionals:
Learn from experts, network with peers, and gain hands-on experience with AI in creative fields.
AI Researchers and Innovators: Explore how AI technologies can be applied in the creative sector to foster new ideas and collaborations.
Sponsored by:
Speakers:
Kirsten Zirngibl
Kirsten Zirngibl is an artist and designer who has contributed to a variety of industries as a concept artist and 2D/3D illustrator, starting in game illustration, and branching into interaction design, advertising, and licensing, with clients including Wizards of the Coast and Google ATAP. She has also exhibited large scale work at Burning Man and multiple art museums in the United States.
Zirngibl is the founder of Zirnworks, LLC, a design and game development studio currently creating “Chroma Circuit”—a new twist on the racing genre, as well as a webapp called Zirnprompt to help artists better scope the AI possibility space.
Friday, Sept. 13 – Keynote: hAIbrid Design: The Best of Both Worlds
An overview on harmonizing traditional creative processes with generative ones for entertainment design and illustration, to expand vision while preserving intent.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that positively impact our community and the environment. She is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts, at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida. She is the founder of the UF AI Climate Justice Lab and the Talk To Me About Water Collective. She founded Wampum.Codes which is both an award-winning podcast and an ethical framework for software development based on indigenous values of co-creation.
Friday, Sept. 13 – Screening: I WOULD LIKE TO BE MIDNIGHT / I WOULD LIKE TO BE SKY
Artist Amelia Winger-Bearskin confronts the idea of sky ownership using innovative AI techniques to visually erase man-made structures in her landscape photography and morph hand-drawn animations. After the screening, she will talk about the algorithms, AI, and processes she used to create the film, and share how it has been featured in art museums, film festivals, and tech showcases like the art gallery at GTC.
Kurt Paulsen
Kurt Paulsen is an accomplished artist and professor with over 20 years of experience in higher education. He has taught at multiple colleges and universities and is currently leading the film production courses at Minnesota State University and the graduate motion graphics courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. With a robust background in video production and motion graphics, Kurt also has taught photography, experimental media art, and visual communication. He was the founder of the Speechless Film Festival where he served as director for eight years. He serves as a media and education consultant for Spawning.ai and is actively engaged in experimental photography and AI-integrated digital art projects.
Friday, Sept. 13 – Presentation: The artists’ control of consent: AI ethics and solutions.
Unlicensed creative content is widely used to create genAI models. Explore how your content is used and steps you can take to express control over your intellectual property.
Saturday, Sept. 14 – Workshop: Building ethically-sourced generative models with Source.Plus.
From data discovery to finished model, we’ll walk through creating your own fine-tuned AI model (LORA) by curating and captioning non-infringing images in Source.Plus.
John Licato, PhD
John Licato, PhD is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at University of South Florida (USF), director of the USF Advancing Machine and Human Reasoning (AMHR) Lab, and founder of a new AI startup Actualization AI, LLC. He designed and teaches the natural language processing course (the field that created ChatGPT) at USF, and his lab’s mission is to not only make AI smarter, but to use those advances to make people reason better as well. His research expertise lies in AI, NLP, human reasoning, cognitive modeling, and legal/regulatory reasoning, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He has been featured in outlets such as NPR’s Marketplace Tech, ABC Action News, and the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Friday, Sept. 13 – Presentation: Identifying AI-Generated Content
Is it possible to identify whether AI content (text, images, video, voice, etc.) is AI- or human-generated? Will we reach a point where it’s completely impossible to distinguish between them? Dr. Licato gives a non-technical overview of answers to these questions, and discusses implications for the future of creative work.
Eamon O’Connor
Eamon O’Connor is an OPS adjunct faculty and Writer in Residence at the Digital Worlds Institute. He is a graduate of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, as well as UC Berkeley’s Rhetoric Department. His academic work focused on speech acts, ideology, poetry, and language games. He has written in a variety of professional contexts including PR and law, digital marketing, copywriting, criticism, digital publishing, and technical writing. He helped edit The Revealer, a publication of NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, and was founding editor of In The Mesh, an online magazine about decentralization in technology and culture. O’Connor was embedded with a team of AI specialists, artists, and machine learning scientists at the DBRS Innovation Labs, where he documented their research. Most recently, he worked at Ubisoft as a technical writer on the Rocksmith+ team.
Saturday, Sept. 14 – Workshop: AI and Interactive Entertainment
An exploration of AI’s potential for new kinds of worldbuilding and storytelling in interactive entertainment.
