Somerset House Studios and the UAL Creative Computing Institute, in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, the University of Edinburgh, and the RIKEN research institute in Japan, are launching the PATH-AI residency programme. Commissioning artists to create new works critically engaging with intercultural ideas of privacy, agency, and trust in relation to artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-driven technologies, the programme is aimed at artists interested in exploring the international landscape for AI ethics, governance, and regulation. Three artists will be supported to develop new works within a 6-month remote residency programme, from March-August 2022, with final works presented by Somerset House in 2022.
Privacy, Agency, and Trust in Human-AI Ecosystems (PATH-AI) is a collaborative and multidisciplinary research project that aims to examine how the three interrelated values of privacy, agency, and trust work together in the very different cultural contexts of the UK and Japan in relation to AI and other data-driven technologies. Grounded in new research summarised in the PATH-AI interim report, the residency supports artists to engage with the report’s themes and findings, from the theoretical and cultural background of these values, to how they are being expressed and performed through everyday lived experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of exploring how differing intercultural understandings of these values can inform the ongoing shaping of the international landscape.
Applications are invited from artists in any international location and from any discipline, with an interest in exploring the interrelated values of privacy, agency, and trust in human-AI ecosystems across different cultural contexts. Engaging with the findings of the PATH-AI interim report as a starting point, it is anticipated that artists will already be considering these themes in their existing work. Joining the Somerset House Studios community via a remote residency over a 6-month period, the artists will be supported to develop their project, to be published online within the Somerset House programme. Where artworks are not designed to live primarily online, the process and outcomes will be documented, and the resulting film shared as a project outcome.
Support:
- Artist fee £5000 (inclusive of Vat or equivalent local sales tax where applicable).
- Production budget £5000 (inclusive of Vat or equivalent local sales tax where applicable).
- Curatorial and artist development support from Somerset House Studios.
- Access to online technical and advisory support in creative technology from the UAL Creative Computing Institute, (e.g. Natural Language Processing, Generative AI image processing, Sound and games design, Human and Computer interaction etc.).
- Regular advisory meetings with researchers from The Alan Turing Institute to access expertise from the humanities and social sciences around intercultural concepts of privacy, agency and trust as they relate to AI and data-driven technologies in the UK and Japan.
- A dedicated mentor, brokered through Somerset House Studios.
- Artist Outcome: online work + screen based element to be shown at Somerset House.
- Access to any artist development programmes or opportunities for Somerset House Studios artists made available during the course of the residency.
