Pushkin House presents a workshop by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel, creators of a new artist-guided walk – HEAR/HERE TO SEE – that shines a light on the automated systems of surveillance and management that lie behind the facades of London’s Westminster.
In their artist talk at Pushkin House, Luksch and Patel discuss how these technologies are poised to dominate our lives and what responses may be made. Ubiquitous networked computing, algorithmic decision making (ADM) and the vast range of systems described as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) are transforming government, markets, fundamental research, industrial processes, transport and logistics, finance and insurance, policing, healthcare, education, media and retail. Meanwhile, values such as autonomy, dignity, and privacy, notions of truth, community, public space, and property and even the very possibility of civic participation have come under pressure. Yet we each have access to tools, protocols and processes of unprecedented power and plasticity. So what is to be done?
In this workshop, Luksch and Patel will explore how art practices in particular can absorb and reflect these algorithmic systems. Part I of the workshop centres around the short hip-hop musical film Algo-Rhythm (2019), and the metaphorical use of computational technologies within it and related works. In Part II (Groupthink), participants are invited to engage in an experimental discussion format designed to clarify some of the key concepts in AI and ADM. Finally, for Part III (Infrastructures) we will look at fundamental mathematical assumptions that are made in algorithm design and data representation, and what alternative choices might reveal. For example, how do different concepts of distance, or different spaces for data visualisation, transform our understanding?
Image still from Algo-Rhythm (2019) courtesy of Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel.
All welcome; no specialised knowledge assumed.
ABOUT THE ORGANISERS
Artist-filmmaker Manu Luksch and composer-mathematician Mukul Patel have been researching the effects of emerging technologies on daily life, social relations, urban space, and corporate-governmental relationships for over 20 years. Although their projects grow on an electronic substrate, the concern with regulation extends beyond the digital domain to the legal status of image data, ethics in AI, and the language of instruction. Their work is shown internationally at film festivals, conferences, galleries and performance venues.