During my Synthetic Media residency at Thoughtworks Arts I began developing a new work Birds of the British Empire that explores the linkages between historical, colonial archives and the training sets used in machine learning. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic the residency took place online via various cloud-based tools and servers.

The museum is… not so much the space for the representation of art history as a machine to produce and stage the new art of today—in other words, to produce “today” as such. In this sense, the museum produces, for the first time, the effect of presence, of looking alive.
— Boris Groys, On The New

Working with Thoughtworks developers we used Continuous Integration (CI) techniques to link together and automate our codebases, so that when for example I make changes to one Machine Learning algorithm the whole system can run end-to-end and generate new results.

These types of distributed workflows open up new ways for artists to organize, store and exhibit work.

Thoughtworks Arts and Baltan Laboratories organized the two-week-long online masterclass: Deepfakes - Synthetic Media And Synthesis, led by director Ellen Pearlman and ThoughtWorker Julien Deswaef and facilitated by Leif Czakai of Baltan Labs.

In congruence with the Starts Prize 2020 exhibition held at Bozar this Fall, Bozar Lab organized a webinar on the topic of artist and technologist collaborations as a model for innovation.

Artist and Thoughtworks Arts A.I. resident, Karen Palmer (Storyteller From The Future), presented her immersive film project Perception IO, and shared how it explores the intersection of A.I., bias, policing, and new, innovative forms of storytelling.

Program director Ellen Pearlman moderated The Grid panel Life During (and After) Covid-19 - Artistic Strategies and Breakthrough Responses.

The live panel discussion focused on how the current global pandemic has impacted art institutions, collaborative work, and audience involvement, especially in relation to innovative indy-led network solutions. 

Program director Andrew McWilliams and Synthetic Media resident Nouf Aljowaysir presented at the virtual Rethink Italy Service Design Festival this summer.

The live-streamed discussion, now available on YouTube, addresses a Service Design audience with ideas on how art-based technology research informs designers examining a changing social landscape over time.

As part of the 39th Annual Battery Dance Festival, Art-A-Hack’s Special Edition COVID-19 2020 “Dancedemic” had its world premiere on August 21st in a live-streamed event.

The live performance was a two-part showcase featuring world-renowned dancers from Battery Dance’s immigrant fellowship program, Hussein Smko (Iraq/Kurdistan/US) and Razvan Stoian (Romania/US).

We are delighted to welcome our latest residents Nouf Aljowaysir and James Coupe to our Synthetic Media Residency.

The two artists join us for the summer 2020 season, where because of COVID-19 they will work remotely on simultaneous projects from their respective studios in Brooklyn and Seattle.