/ Event

Human + Machine

Fri 17 May from 4pm

This afternoon and evening event is the official launch of the Art-AI festival, including a lecture from research pioneer Gerhard Fischer and a performance by Improbotics

Human + Machine is a free afternoon/evening celebration of artificial intelligence in art and performance. The event begins with a public lecture, followed by an early evening performance – punctuated by the official launch of the Art-AI Festival 2019.

The special guest lecture comes from human-machine research pioneer Gerhard Fischer, visiting from Colorado, USA. Gerhard’s work has explored human-computer interaction, invesigating themes in meta-design, social creativity, cultures of participation, computer-supported collaborative learning and collaborative problem solving and decision making with table-top computing environments. His lecture will discuss aspects of his lifelong contribution to the field of human-machine science.

The launch event marks the begining of the Art-AI Festival 2019: in its second year, and back by popular demand, this year’s event takes place at a number of venues across Leicester. The launch celebrates the signature festival exhibition by Mario Klingemann, on show in our gallery space. Mario – along with a number of leading artists – will be in Leicester to discuss their work at the State of the AI-Art conference 23rd May (tickets here).

Finally we present Improbotics, which is both an improvised comedy show and a live Turing test: an actual artificial intelligence-based chatbot is performing in the show alongside human improvisers. The AI sends lines to one of the improvisers via an earpiece. The cast’s impossible and hilarious challenge is to justify – physically and emotionally – lines that may make no sense at all. The audience’s challenge is to guess who is the AI and who is Human. Piotr Mirowski, a research scientist in artificial intelligence as well as a theatre and improv actor, comes back to Art-AI Leicester to direct Improbotics and to talk about the science of chatbots and the use of AI to inspire performance artists. Last year, Piotr and his collaborator Kory Mathewson presented HumanMachine, their work on AI improv; Improbotics takes this further with a full cast of professional theatre actors and of seasoned improvisers.

The schedule for the afternoon/evening is –

16:00-17:00 – Lecture: Gerhard Fischer, Midland Room

17:30-18:30 – VIP Launch event, Gallery

18:30-19:45 – Performance: HumanMachine, Screen 2

Tickets are available via Eventbrite