We are pleased to announce that the Simulacra & Similitude: Synthetic Media residency has been jointly awarded to two artists, Nouf Aljowaysir and James Coupe. Due to COVID-19, these residencies have been restructured to take place fully online.

Our external partners for this residency are MIT Open Doc Lab, an academic center for innovative documentary research, and WITNESS, a non-profit organization dealing with human rights and emerging technologies.

ThoughtWorks Germany recently hosted public and internal presentations looking at the emerging technology research work done by artists as part of ThoughtWorks Arts.

The video above is from an event which took place about two weeks before Berlin began shuttering public gatherings due to COVID-19.

Ellen Pearlman’s new “emotionally intelligent artificially intelligent” brainwave opera AIBO had its world premiere on February 22nd at the Estonian Academy of Music’s state of the art Black Box Theater in Tallinn.

The opera investigates Artificial Intelligence and its effects on both fascism and love. In the performance viewers take part in an interaction between Eva, played by actor Sniedze Strauta, and AIBO, a ‘sicko’ AI. Eva is wearing an Emotiv EEG brainwave headset connected to a bodysuit of light, designed by smart textiles designer Dila Demir.

Rachel Uwa, founder of the School of Machines, Making and Make-Believe, presented as a guest of ThoughtWorks Arts in Germany. The event took place about two weeks before Berlin began shuttering public gatherings due to COVID-19.

Rachel’s talk looks at the origins of the school, drawing from her childhood in Texas, her rejection of the political and military status quo and subsequent immigration to Germany in the early-to-mid 2000s.

As a Fulbright World Learning Specialist, ThoughtWorks Arts Director Ellen Pearlman was selected from a competitive pool of Fulbright Alumni throughout the country to present at The U.S. Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminar (Alumni TIES) on the topic of "Art, Culture, and Transforming Conflict".

The Exchange Seminar took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico on December 10th - 14th, bringing together Fulbright alumni to share initiatives supporting social change and transforming conflict through the arts.

As a guest of the tech ethics summit All Tech Is Human in San Francisco, program director Andrew McWilliams spoke recently about projects incubated by ThoughtWorks Arts.

The talk centers on example projects which help to illustrate the mission of ThoughtWorks Arts, and its role in incubating research projects into emerging technologies, driven specifically by artistic inquiry.

We’re thrilled to announce that both Ellen Pearlman and Rashin Fahandej have been selected for the highly competitive ZERO1 American Arts Incubator 2020 program in collaboration with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Of the six artists selected, Ellen will be working in Ukraine, and Rashin will be working in Austria.