We are very pleased to welcome our newest resident Rashin Fahandej, an Iranian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker.

During her Thoughtworks Arts Residency, with support from Scatter, Rashin will be using Depthkit to expand her practice, furthering the development of her project, A Father’s Lullaby.

A Father’s Lullaby is a multi-platform, community engaged interactive work that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The project is a “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art and technology mobilizes a plethora of voices to ignite a more inclusive dialogue to effect social change.

Rashin is currently a research fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab and a visiting faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She will be in residence at Thoughtworks Arts from June 10 to September 27, 2019, and her project is slated to be shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston, MA.

You can learn more about Rashin, her project, and our residency partner Scatter, in the announcement blog post.

Extension of The Open Call for The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence

Thoughtworks Arts has extended the open call The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence via Blockchain until July 31, 2019.

Artists are invited to investigate the monopolization and centralization of artificial intelligence by a small number of corporate giants and state actors.

We are leaving it open to artists to surprise us with proposals that address the many and varied themes around the ownership of AI, using the tension between monopolization and democratization as a point of departure.

One alternative option to concentrated control is decentralized community ownership of AI using blockchain technology. To support this residency, we partnered with Snark.art, a blockchain technology company empowering artists to move the medium.

For this fully funded, 16 week residency, we are looking for creatives to develop innovative approaches including, but not limited to, emerging relationships between AI, blockchain, open source and global control that will result in a unique artwork.

Visit our Open Call: Blockchain & AI page to learn more.

News from Past Thoughtworks Arts Residents

Catie Cuan is on the cover of Stanford Magazine’s May edition. Her work with movement and robots was highlighten in their feature article Why Dance Matters

Moon Ribas will be a juror for this year’s Prix Ars Electronica.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg was recently interviewed by DIGICULT on how her work explores artificial intelligence and biological surveillance. Heather also co-curated Refiguring The Future, a politically engaged exhibition focusing on inclusion, and how the intersection of art, science and technology is an explicitly key force in radical change. This was REFRESH’s inaugural exhibition, which received a Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant.

Updates from Art-A-Hack™ Alumni

Rena Anakwe, Artist-In-Resident at Issue Project Room, will present Fast Forward to Silence, her second commissioned project, on July 11th.

Tyler Parker had a debut as a tenor in Frederick Fleet in The Village Light Opera Group presents: TITANIC the Musical!

Sharon de la Cruz was a guest speaker and educator at Processing Community Day at Medios Interactivos USFQ.

Filip Baba ran a community XR jam on April 26 at RLab, a warehouse-sized venue which is the first city-funded VR/AR center in the country.

Presentations

Ellen Pearlman is scheduled to present a paper at the world renowned ISEA (International Society Of Electronic Art) 2019, on her work with connecting brain computer interfaces to AI. This year ISEA will take place in Gwangju, Republic of Korea, June 22th-28th.

Andrew McWilliams presented RIOT: Recognizing Human Facial Expressions In A Climate Of Fear for a lightning talk at Creative Tech Week NYC

Publications

Ellen Pearlman: The Resurgence of Russian Cosmism - Performance Arts Journal, MIT Press.

Catie Cuan, Ellen Pearlman and Andrew McWilliams: OUTPUT: Translating Robot and Human Movers Across Platforms in a Sequentially Improvised Performance - From the 2019 AISB (The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour) Machine Movement Lab at Falmouth University, UK.

Blog Posts

• Rashin Fahandej Awarded Volumetric Filmmaking Residency by the Residency Team
• Why We Are Investigating the Democratization of AI via Blockchain by the Residency Directors
• PBS Features Thoughtworks Arts Resident & Interaction Technology by the Residency Team
• EmoPy: A Machine Learning Toolkit For Emotional Expression by Angelica Perez
• Industrial Robotics and Human Movement: New Experiments by the Residency Team
• Recognizing Human Facial Expression With Machine Learning by Angelica Perez
• How Arts Programs Drive Innovation at Thoughtworks by Andrew McWilliams
• How Artists Are Reshaping Emerging Technology Research by Andrew McWilliams
• Robotics Artists Begin Their Residencies at Thoughtworks by the Residency Team
• Karen Palmer: The Film That Watches You Back by the Residency Team
• Adrianne Wortzel and Catie Cuan Awarded Robotics Residency by the Residency Team
• Thoughtworks Arts Exhibition at SPRING/BREAK for Armory Week 2018 by the Residency Team
• How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Criminal Justice System by Stephanie Weber
• Industrial Design Process for the ‘Time Sense’ Prototype by Oryan Inbar
• Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning show at Fridman Gallery by Ellen Pearlman
• Welcoming Karen Palmer to the Thoughtworks Arts Residency by the Residency Team
• Presenting Our Art & Technology Projects at TEDxVilnius by Andrew McWilliams
• Karen Palmer Awarded Thoughtworks AI Residency by the Residency Team
• Why We Are Investigating the Biases of Artificial Intelligence by the Residency Directors
• Welcoming Hannes Bend to the Thoughtworks Arts Residency by the Residency Team
• Suppressed Images: Advocating for Chelsea Manning’s Release by the Residency Team
• Developing a Cyborg Time Sense: Research and Experimentation by Andrew McWilliams
• Global Visioning Session with the Cyborgs by Andrew McWilliams

Love this newsletter? Check out our archive, forward to your friends, and share our subscription sign up!