Glad to introduce our next speaker pair already on stage. These are Sophie Caroline Wagner and Rosemary Lee. Welcome here. They are collaborating actually coming from slightly different backgrounds and working across media theory, digital art and social economics and also with a background in narrative theory and then research cultures and today we will discuss what artists can bring to the table when it comes to times of crises or times like this so analysis paralysis and the bag of bad ideas. Welcome on stage. Thank you very much for the introduction. Thanks everyone for being here. As I said, my name is Sophie-Caroline Wagner. We're going to do like a quick presentation each and then we're going to discuss. I'm going to speak really fast so to make up time, not because i siarad. Rwy'n mynd i siarad yn gyflym iawn, felly i ddatblygu amser, nid oherwydd mai dyna sut rwy'n cyflwyno. Ie, fy enw i yw Sophie-Caroline Wagner, rwy'n ymchwilydd athro, beth mae hynny'n fy ngwneud i mi? Pwy ydw i ar hynny? Rwy'n gwneud celf, felly rwy'n mynd i fynd drwy rai pethau. Dyma fy ngyrch. Hypermemory, yr oeddwn i'n ei wneud gyda Wolfgang Ffiel, sy'n siarad am y cofnod, Hold My Pace, dim ond ddwy metronomes ticking in the other one's pace. Proof of Burn, a performance I did with too many people to mention, unfortunately, where we essentially just translated crypto and blockchain technologies into an experienceable kind of theatre thing. That was actually really fun because people just stood there to mine DarkCoin for whatever reason. But they worked. This was from P the bazaar publishing uh something that talked about jewish culture but it was also a library hack uh and because of my research i also published stuff so i published a few books this was based on a dissertation this i edited with a couple of people that was conversations and open hardware and a book that book that I co-authored with quite a few people in a book sprint in Qatar. So apparently I opened up things. This is just to underline why I have anything to say about this topic. But why we are actually here is the shared analysis paralysis that my colleague Rosemary Lee and I are feeling when we are faced with these many world events. ydw i a'r dwi yn teimlo pan fyddwn ni'n cael ein hwynebu gyda'r amlwg hyn yma. Ac mae'n ddewis ychydig o ddychmyg o ddychmyg i ddewis pan fyddwn ni'n meddwl sut i gydweithio gyda'r amlwg hyn yma mewn ffordd sylweddol. Bydd y cyflwyniad hwn yn dda iawn o ran ymgyrchu a'r hyn sy'n bwysig. Mae hyn yn dweud, yn enwedig yn y diwethaf y diwethaf, bod y gwybodaeth a'r wybodaeth yn cael ei ddysgu dros neu i fy nghyd-destun. Rwy'n credu bod hynny'n ei gyfrifol. Roedd hyn yn rhywbeth rwy'n cael fy nghyd-destun. Nid oedd yn cael ei ddysgu ar unrhyw arwain cymdeithasol neu unrhyw un mawr. Pan roedd gwydnwyr yn adnabod yn y DU a'u bod yn agos iawn i'r digwyddiad o'r cynyddu. Ac mae'r DU hefyd yn ymwybodol o'r ffordd o'i ddewis, oherwydd maen nhw'n dal i ddweud y dylem ni ddod i gynyddu cymorth economaidd i gadw'r economi i'w llwyddo. Felly, y lle rydyn ni'n cael ein hunain fel economi o'r cynyddu. Mae newidiadau ymddygiadol yn y ffordd. Rwy'n siwr bod pawb wedi gweld yna, ac rwy'n siwr bod pobl sydd ddim yn gweld yna yn fwy ar gael ar hyn o bryd. I'm sure we've all noticed them and I'm sure that people that notice them even more out there right now. And honestly, things are just getting weirder. Like when I read about the Sharknado and undersea volcano erupting, spitting out mutant sharks, I was like, okay, I suppose. And also why do I know so much about the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp case? Like, I don't care about celebrities. And I honestly have to assume that this was a psyop to kind of test a tool for public opinion swaying or something like that. Because that's such a horrific topic that everyone had an opinion on it. So, what do we do? Maybe technology can do something about this, right? Technological art and science has kind of become the paramount of knowledge. It even superseded language. So that should do something. But then, you know, there's the political parties that don't really understand technology, or so it seems, because they argue that to protect children from abuse and sexual abuse, we should check text messages, which to me is just a bit of an odd response undermining any kind of privacy in online communication. And I'm wondering, is that the right tool to approach this? So, and there's the other thing, like the technological solutions that are usually on wide offer to us are not necessarily coming from a good place. Also, so okay, the people that talk about technology apparently don't really understand it very well. And then there is also the problem that all of our communication and where we pour Ac yna mae y problem yw bod llawer o gyfathrebu, ac yn lle rydyn ni'n gorfod ein hwyrau mewn, y ffordd mae'r data mwyaf ddifrifol yn cael ei gyrru, yn seiliedig ar dechnolegau sydd ddim yn unigol iawn fel y byddem ni'n eu hangen nhw. Ac mae hyn yn un o fy enghreifftiau ffawr, y digwyddiad ar y llaw. Dwi ddim yn gwybod a ydych chi wedi'i ddod o hyd ar hynny neu os mae hynny wedi'i ddod o hyd ar eich ymwybyddiaeth. Mae'n llyfr bach bach, yn llyfr sy'n cynnwys 11 llinellau, I don't know if you picked up on that or if that driven your consciousness. It's a tiny, tiny library, literally consisting of 11 lines, an open source library that is widely used. And when the person that wrote this library took it offline, Google went offline, Facebook went offline, everyone went offline because they're actually using open source libraries because it's easier. So 11 lines of code took all of them offline for at least a while. o'r llyfrgellau oherwydd mae'n haws. Felly, roedd 11 llyfrau o ddodd i gyd o'r llyfrgellau, am atleisiad o amser. Ac yna mae'r elfen hwn, ac rwyf wedi'i ddewis fel enghraifft, oherwydd mae'n un o'r rhai ffurfiad i mi, lle gallwn ddewis y nheryfyniadau mwyaf wych a mwyaf hyderus am sut y gall technoleg ddweud y gwir, chi'n gwbod, ddiffynu popeth ac mae popeth yn wir ac yn wahanol, ac mae hynny'n wych. about how technology might actually influence everything and everything is actually weird and different, and that's wonderful. And people love to quote Stephen Hawking on this and are like, oh, but yeah, then we can go into simulation and time travel and even zombies somehow became part of the canon when we talk about philosophy of technology or media theory. And that in itself is super enticing. or media theory. And that in itself is super enticing. But then, you know, then people are talking about sentient machines. And that is probably interesting. But the problem that I have with that is that it actually takes away from the discourse of things that are actually relevant. I mean, when we talk about AI, the acceptability and the adaptability of AI, the underrepresentation of minorities, whether it's their culture or their language, all of these are actual ethical issues that we're facing, and yet people are talking about the sentient AI. I find that a bit problematic. The other thing, and that's actually a thought that I feel, and Daisy, my media consumption is very chaotic, same as this presentation. I feel like it's from Catherine Cross, that the people that are worried about sentient AI are usually the people in power, and the people in power are usually worried about anything sentient that isn't in power. It doesn't have to be an AI. Let's start with people of color or women. These are the people that are therefore worried about other sentient beings that might somehow take away from their own power, which I thought was interesting. And that's probably the reason why I'm not so worried about sentient AI, not only because they don't actually understand what sentient means and attribute behavior to sentience, which it is in its agency. Also, the other thing is, like, I feel like at the moment, even AI comes sentient, we're still pretty safe. We can do something about this. So what about art? This is, again, just a picture that just kind of sums up my frustration when it comes to art. This was tweeted out by our Mae'r llun hwn yn y llun sy'n ymwneud â fy mhrwstriai pan fydd yn ymwneud â'r celf. Mae'r llun wedi'i ddweud, neu mae'r llun wedi'i ddweud, ei fod yn digwydd ar gyfer y Cyflawniad Cymru. Oherwydd mae'n amlwg bod hwn yn yr hyn mae'r artistiaid angen ei wneud. Ac mae'n ymwneud â'r ffordd rydyn ni'n ymwynebu â'n farchnad a'r economi rydyn ni'n anodd. Ac mae'n dweud, ie, mae'r pethau eraill. A'n ddrwg, nid yw hynny wedi'i ddynnu â'r Rhywbryd Pw i ni ei wneud. Mae yna bethau eraill, ac mae hynny ddim yn ysgwyl â Pussy Riot, ond mae yna ffyrdd eraill o sut y gallwch greu eich arfer marchnol eich hun a gwneud yn siŵr y gallwch chi fod yn ymwneud â'r economi marchnol fel artist, ond nid yn unig bethau y gallwn ei ddysgu gyda. Mae'n golygu beth ffordd o ffaminaeth dwi am fod, where it definitely at least raises the question what kind of feminist I want to be and if I can identify with the streams that are happening in there. And then there are new approaches to marketability in art. And honestly, the actual structures are so anachronistic that we're perpetuating in this, that I'm almost stunned that this is coming from the same people that were originally there to criticise these exact structures and just replace them again. And, yeah, this tweet just sums up how I feel about this pretty well. And then, you know, then I think to myself, hey, but you also studied economics, so maybe there's something in economic theory dwi'n teimlo am hyn yn eithaf da. Yna dwi'n meddwl i fy hun, hei, ond ti hefyd wedi astudio economaeth, felly efallai bod rhywbeth yn theori economaeth sy'n gallu helpu ti allan. Ond yna dwi'n teimlo fy hun yn y sefyllfa hwn. Ac rwy'n meddwl, eto, mae gen i ddiffyg. Felly beth ydyn ni'n ei wneud os yw dim ond syniad o ddau sy'n ddifrif i'w dewis pan fyddwn yn meddwl am is to choose from when we think about to battle our analysis paralysis. Maybe Rosemary Lee has a good input for that. Thank you. Okay, so joining, I guess, my provocation to add to the discussion, I'll just start by introducing myself. So I'm also an artist and researcher and I have a background in media studies. So my focus is mostly on the history of visual technologies. In the past few years I've been, my work has mostly centered on the influence of algorithmic processes in image production. And I completed my PhD in 2020 with a thesis entitled Machine Learning and Notions of the Image. In that work, I've been specifically looking at how the incorporation of machine learning into artistic practices shapes the way that we think about and assess images. And I've subsequently been adapting that work into a more accessible form under the working title Algorithm Image Art. But one of the core arguments of my recent research is that while machine learning is a relatively new paradigm of image making, it touches on a number of issues that have been explored at length in the history of art and in theories of the image. So for example, questions concerning the value, authorship, and meaning and truthfulness of images has become intimately connected to technological processes, especially since the widespread use of photographic and later digital media. So this connects to longer threads in my work, which is deeply informed by the approach of media archaeology, approach of media archaeology, which seeks to better understand media artifacts and contexts through longer historical tendencies that shape them. So media archaeology often looks at early precursor technologies to those of today in order to gain an understanding of how current methods, devices, or perspectives are related to those of the past. So, for example, we might look at pre-cinematic devices in relation to current film or digital media. Adopting what Siegfried Zielinski calls a deep time perspective of media allows us to draw insights from artifacts of the distant past in contrast to the common tendency to exclusively consider technology in terms of the new. So one of the points that I'd like to problematize in this discussion is the role of visual culture in facing real world issues that are very difficult to thoroughly address in all of their complexity. So, for example, discourse around the supposed autonomy or recently sentience of artificial intelligence systems not only glosses over the reality of what's actually at stake in them, it also builds up a precedent for corporations to shirk responsibility for the reality of what's actually at stake in them. It also builds up a precedent for corporations to shirk responsibility for the outcome of machine learning systems. This came up earlier in the year regarding a legal challenge about whether the creations of an AI can be copyrighted according to US law. And it begs the question of what implications this could have if the opacity of machine learning could be used to draw away the liability from the corporations that develop and use it. And parallel to this, I've seen an increasing amount of funding opportunities explicitly targeting the hype around AI and art, and especially asking artists to more or less perform ethics around these topics. crucial and very, very much needed, this tendency to just call in an artist and then consider the problem solved, and at least the PR side of it, it makes the image look better, and that's what generally matters to these institutions. So it touches on the tendency to treat artists as reformers, illustrators, and communicators of technology. And I've been increasingly getting the impression that artists are caught in a rift between making art and actually getting roped into publicly remediating problematic technologies. problematic technologies. So I feel like the general sentiment of the current moment, this goes well beyond the cultural sector, and it's kind of well summarized by this image from July of last year. I'm sure many of you have already seen it, but it documents a fire that was caused by a leak in an undersea gas line. And the surface of the ocean caught on fire for more than five hours. The image quickly became emblematic of the variety of highly mediated global crises that have been discussed online since the beginning of the pandemic. crises that have been discussed online since the beginning of the pandemic. And it, of course, gave rise to a variety of different memes, ranging from the timely to the timely, but I guess also absurd. And in searching for images of this incident, I also came across this, like the original image, but with the title, maybe it's no big deal, but apparently the ocean caught on fire. But I feel like this meme, this particular variation of the meme, really captures what we're faced with currently. People are sold the idea of personal responsibility, and we watch via the internet while things spiral vastly out of control, and nothing is concretely done to solve the problems that exist. So I made my own version of the meme that I thought we could use as a start, as like kind of an end note for this conversation. And to think about what role art and artists can play when faced with such seemingly impossible circumstances. So with that, I guess I'll join Sophie, and maybe we can wrap up. Yes. So I just want to thank everyone for joining us for this experiment, because we just thought it would be kind of interesting to start a dialogue like an open dialogue that maybe we can also continue off the stage and and throughout the next coming coming days um just because i feel like this is something that we've been discussing quite a lot just personally um and i feel like a lot of people can relate to this like we're all kind of struggling with these political issues and like how do we deal with the problems of the world and tech and art and all the while we still have to feed ourselves and get dressed in the morning and everything kind of goes from this between the giant meta questions and and these things that are just far beyond our ability to to sometimes even comprehend but let alone do anything about and then the deeply personal like the where do I fit into all of this and like what can I do and where can I how can I make meaningful change uh in my work or you know even just on the the social level um yeah no absolutely I think we kind of got caught up between this external and internal doom and the existential dread that our daily lives gets to us and we kind of consider it concern ourselves with the question like what can art do in this? Should artists be be these seismographs that both warn about disaster and put it put solutions into place? I mean if we look at it historically just before the First World War a lot of artists and intellectuals were actually pro-war. So I'm not even sure whether we should be in this place. That's the other thing. And the third thing is because there is such a thing as wanting to live and eat and have a roof over our head, we need to work with these structures. And there are these increasing calls that call artists for solutions to really large problems and usually these calls are also like an absolute slap in the face because they're like, oh could you please send in a 40 page proposal so you can maybe get this grant and then get 500 euros cash every month for like two months and ideally develop like a whole exhibition out of this on top of everything and by the way we will only get back to the two people that are selected and ideally develop like a whole exhibition out of this on top of everything. And by the way, we will only get back to the two people that are selected. So, you know, it's kind of a tricky position and I feel like there might be a lot of people here that face that as well. So we, unfortunately, we can't present a solution. But I thought discussing the problem in itself could be valuable. Yeah, and I think maybe that's the point, like the core kernel of this is that I feel like we don't talk about this enough. We don't really talk about the struggles that artists face with the very concrete, the minutiae, but also the gigantic, you know, philosophical issues that we're confronted with, and exactly as you brought up, it's, we don't often ask, like, should we, you know, should, is this the role that artists should be playing, and are we being instrumentalized by massive corporations, or funding bodies or institutions that have massive amounts of power and then kind of use art in a very, you know, sometimes questionable way to gloss things over? And are we, as artists or creatives or thinkers, are we equipped to perform this work sometimes? Like, sometimes we are not equipped with either the resources or, you know, in any sense. It's just a basic infrastructure. Exactly, yeah. It's infrastructural and, you know, across the board. Yeah, you said something really recently, and I don't want to speak for you, but it made me think when you were like, someone approached you and was like, what kind of tools in AI do artists need? It's like, can we just have infrastructure? Could you just like, we don't need it. We have enough tools, we're good. And I was like, yeah, that is really important, right? But as long as we concern ourselves with these very basic needs as well, then we're supposed to apparently solve the world events that just wash over us on a daily basis. It seems a bit tricky. That's really true, and so often, I think many times project fundings are structured in a way that it doesn't lend itself to good art, and it doesn't lend itself to a productive working experience and it certainly doesn't lend itself to critical engagement with topics of great importance even as they propose to do and and I've really kind of got you know that I'm going to give a presentation next week about AI infrastructure, and it really, I end the presentation by saying, you know, we don't need these tools. Artists need what they always need, which is support. And I think that, and maybe, I don't know, sorry, I feel like it's a little bit of a hippie moment, but I feel like maybe that's where we could actually take some positivity out of it, that maybe by discussing and supporting each other, we can kind of make progress in this area. Should I maybe do the last part? And then, so I thought we could end with just like a little snippet that I read yesterday and I felt like it kind of is a poignant kernel to end on. So it's from this book, Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell. And oh, do you want me to hold the mic? Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. by Legacy Russell. Do you want me to hold the mic? Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. Oh my God, and I think I lost my... Oh my God. Okay. So she says, we want a new framework for this, and for this framework, we want new skin. The digital world provides a potential space where this can play out. Through the digital, we make new worlds and we dare to modify our own. So I feel like that's kind of a nice challenge that we can maybe go out into the world with as like kind of engaging with the glitches and the problems and and trying to construct our own um maybe tools and progress from there so thank you all for watching thank you very much Thank you.