AI @ MUTEK Forum

In 2024 the AI track of the Forum was themed Into the Wild: Towards AI Ecologies. Interactive keynotes, panels, film screenings, and labs asked how AI relates to environmental impact, climate action, and wilder creative territories. Norhan Bayomi opened on igniting climate action through AI and art; co-presented with Gray Area, Portrait XO sonified a century of climate data. Friday’s Wilding AI Lab, with Concordia’s Milieux Institute and the Applied AI Institute, turned Studio Hydro-Québec into a day of talks, performances, and a makers fair. Abundant Intelligences convened a panel with Dr Melanie Cheung, Professor Karim Jerbi, and Artist and Professor Jackson Two Bears.

The 2023 Forum followed the arrival of general-purpose AI systems such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, and the questions they raise around bias, privacy, copyright, and transparency. Co-curated with Creative Director Sarah MacKenzie, Wednesday 23 August continued from the (de)Stabilizing Diffusions exhibition at SAT, bridging tech power, art in AI governance, Indigenous ways of knowing, environmental cost, and gender- and race-based bias.

The panel The Genrefication of AI – From Critical Encounters to Artistic Practice asked whether artistic practice can keep its criticality toward AI as AI art and music become genres, and what role curation, NFTs, and Big Tech narratives play in that shift.

The 2021 Forum returned to AI as a recurring thread, bringing together speakers to explore diverse imaginaries of the technology. Benjamin Bratton gave a keynote on politics and AI after the pandemic. An Ars Electronica Futurelab panel hosted by Ali Nikrang asked how humans and machines compose together. Kanta Dihal was joined in a session on alternative AI imaginaries, while short presentations tracked AI’s impact on music, digital arts, and XR. Memo Akten spoke in an artist Q&A, and a workshop from intelligent.museum introduced Deep Learning and data bias.

Curated by Claudine Hubert, MUTEK Forum 2020 turned to AI on Thursday 10 September: a continuation of the 2019 Forum and of the MUTEK AI Art Lab held in Montréal that March with Zú. The day looked at artistic practices through racial justice, surveillance, and the risks of collecting personal data, and included workshops on AI techniques in electronic music and sound. Sabelo Mhlambi was in conversation with Maurice Jones on Indigenous Relational Humanism (Ubu-Ntu), Afro-Futurism, and how we create and relate to AI.