Text by CLOT Magazine
The annual Digital Design Weekend returns to the V&A for the seventh edition. The museum premises will host the festival from 22 to 23 September. This year’s focal theme is Artificial Intelligence. Along with the accompanying topics of human-machine interactions and potential future worlds, this festival edition is an attempt to raise questions related to complex relationships with AI and also with technology in general. If machines can do creative work, where lies the future of design?
How should we conceptualise legal rights and accountability to AI? How objective or biased are robots? What are the basic ethical and social implications of AI? Could AI help humans develop a new perspective and sense of beauty?
DDW will offer several exhibitions, interactive installations, performances, showcases, talks and workshops, some family-friendly but all free and drop-in. Among many events, visitors will be able to hear about algorithmic bias, transgenic art and computer-generated art or experience dance performance which explores possibilities of introducing nonhuman bodies into performance space.
Furthermore, spectators will have a chance to meet Embarrassed Robots, which are challenging the need for robots to adopt human expressions and emotions or to get acquainted with ways of digital self-protection using storyboarding kits.
There is also a good representation of Spanish artists, like Jaime de Los Ríos, who will be showing PORTRAITS, a piece that explores the way people represent themselves in the big mosaic of the Internet; at the same time, it studies how painting tradition’s heritage affects our daily life.
For the ones with the most hands-on approach to learning and experience, there will be several intriguing workshops, including a quick way to make Twitter bots, a dive into the “fake news” phenomenon and a game in which you will create sci-fi stories about current and future topics. You will also be able to, for instance, learn how to make a camera for capturing wildlife and to compare your vision of the world with AI – or to collaborate with one to create a unique cyborg tale!
All in all, the upcoming weekend could be very educational and fascinating if you happen to be in London.
