Original photo by J. Astra Brinkmann. Adjusted, with cynical intent, By Eryk Salvaggio Using Stable Diffusion.

My work ranges from traditional forms of research & reporting to creative and artistic research projects, most strongly related to technology and society — particularly artificial and distributed intelligence. I am available for interviews, and to coordinate projects, seminars and workshops for organizations open to implementing or exploring values sensitive design frameworks for their programs, activities, or projects.

I am the Siegel Family Endowment’s Emerging Technology Researcher advisor, a 2024 Flickr Foundation Research Fellow, and part of the editorial committee for the Technoetic Arts journal. I have worked with numerous partners in the non-profit, policy and philanthropic sectors on projects, publications and presentations related to art, design, social research, and technology.

I have collaborated on projects related to generative AI and/or systems design for cyber-physical systems with Universities (RIT, University of Cambridge, ECAL, Brown University, NYU, Elisava Barcelona, Michigan State University), non-profits (AIxDesign, American Society for Cybernetics), public conferences (Defcon 31, SXSW, RightsCon) and academic conferences (RSD, ISSS). I’ve spoken to popular press (The New York Times, Wired Magazine, BBC4) and academic journals (Patterns, Leonardo, IMAGE, Interactions of the ACM).

If you’re interested in working with me, let me know!

I am available for podcasts, public speaking events, and for having work in exhibitions or publications. In addition, I am always open to lead workshops, consult on design (including creative projects, AI projects and higher ed curriculum development) and to traditional or creative research & writing on topics related to the ethics of emerging technology.

Education

Universities

  • 2022. MSc., Applied Cybernetics, Australian National University.

  • 2013. MSc., Media and Communications, London School of Economics.

  • 2010. BS, New Media, University of Maine.

  • 2010. BS, Journalism, University of Maine.

Fellowships

  • Flickr Foundation Research Fellow, 2024.

CertificationS

  • Data for Cultural Heritage. University of Cambridge (UK) Cultural Heritage Data School.

  • Data Context Communication Engineer (Fellowship), Civic Software Foundation.

  • Blockchain Fundamentals Certification (UC Berkeley).

  • Foresight Practitioner Certification (Institute for the Future).

Projects
(Since 2020)

Because of You (2024)

  • Winner, 2024 CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) Art Competition, organized by Luba Elliott and Xavier Snelgrove.

  • Named “Best Film Reflecting Ethical and Legal Issues in the Use of Technology” at the 2024 CineTech Futures Festival.

SWIM (2024)

  • Shown at Unsound Music Festival, Krakow, 2024.

  • Premiered at the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2024.

  • Nominated for Best Artificial Intelligence Film, Cannes World Film Festival, 2024.

  • Selected for the Art After Dark series at Bunjil Place, Melbourne, Australia, 2024.

Flowers Blooming Backward Into Noise (2023)

  • Performed w/ live score by Dublin Sound Lab at Music Current Festival, Dublin, Ireland, 2024.

  • Included at the “Decoding the Black Box” exhibition at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Germany, 2024.

  • Official Selection, Burano International AI Film Festival, Italy, 2024.

  • Official Selection, Shapeshift Festival, 2024.

  • Presented at the “Adrenalin Prompt” exhibition at the Forking Room, Seoul, Korea, 2023.

  • Presented at the “Artificial Intelligence” exhibition at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Barcelona, 2023.

  • Presented as part of Arts Everywhere, Canada, 2023.

Sarah Palin Forever (2023)

  • Selection, Philadelphia Independent Film Festival.

  • Selection, 2024 West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, AI and Art category.

  • Selection, IMMATERIAL Film Festival of Tabakalera, Spain, 2024.

  • Named Best AI Film, Orion International Film Festival, Australia/Germany, 2024.

  • Included at the “Decoding the Black Box” exhibition at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Germany, 2024.

  • Official Selection, Burano International AI Film Festival, Italy, 2024.

  • Selected to compete in +RAIN, the first European film festival for AI-generated cinema, and presented at SONAR (Spain), 2023.

  • Selected for the Clapham International Film Festival, 2023.

  • Semi-Finalist, Pebbles Underground Film and Video Art Festival, 2023.

  • Presented at the “Artificial Intelligence” exhibition at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Barcelona, 2023.

  • Part of the Wrong Biennale, 2023.

Extraction (2023)

  • Presented at Poetics of Prompting Exhibition, MU Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven NL.

  • Presented at DEFCON 31

Gaussian Noise, Human Hands (2023)

  • Presented at SXSW, DEFCON 31

  • Included in Outland art magazine, “How to Glitch AI.”

Interpolation (2023)

  • Video artwork exhibited at “Tomorrows,” Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, NY, 2023.

The Salt and the Women (2023)

  • Exhibited at UMWELT, FMAV Palazzo Santa Margherita in Modena, curated by Marco Mancuso.

STORYxCODE LEarning Experience Manager, for SUBLAB & AIxDESIGN

  • Presented at the New Museum for New Inc.

  • Developed a workshop schedule and learning journey for a program pairing filmmakers and animators with creative technologists to explore storytelling with generative AI.

Spurious Content & Visual Synonyms (2023)

  • For “‘A Kind of Alchemy': The Work of Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Digital Art Histories Journal, DAHJ Gallery. June 2023.

Worlding: SYMPOIETIC Mycology (With Claudia Westermann and Vinny montag) 2022

  • Cover story for The Posthumanist magazine.

  • Installation at RSD 12 conference, Birmingham, UK. 2022.

  • Michigan State University Science Museum CoLaboratory, 1.5 Degrees Celsius Exhibition.

  • Album released on No Type label, October 2022.

The Day Computers Became Obsolete (with Guillaume Pelletier-Auger) 2021

  • Official Selection, Ontario International Animation Festival.

  • Official Selection, Confluence Festival (Grand Rapids, Michigan).

Toward a Situationist Blockchain (with Serife Wong) 2021

  • Presented to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

A Butterfly in the Cloud 2021

  • Presented on AI24 (Streaming AI Video Art Channel)

  • Official selection, 2021 Film and Video Poetry Symposium (Los Angeles)

  • Published in Digital America with commentary.

  • Exhibited at the Rochester Contemporary Art Museum.

Music for an Eagle and Three Satellites 2020

  • Exhibited at Australian Cybernetic exhibition at Australian National University (2022).

  • Performed for “As If Radio” artist’s broadcast at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), Glasgow (2021)

Infomesh (Created with interaction design students at Ecal) 2019

  • Presented at the San Francisco Web Conference

  • Exhibited at the Internet Archive, San Francisco

  • 2024. Tech Policy Press. Challenging the Myths of Generative AI. (Link).

  • 2024. Flickr Foundation. The Ghost Stays in the Picture (I-III). (Part 1).

  • 2024. Tech Policy Press. Context, Consent, and Control: The Three C’s of Data Participation in the Age of AI. (Link)

  • 2024. Razpotja / Adela Arts Festival, On Gordon Pask: Conversations with Maverick Machines. In Slovenian and English. (Link).

  • 2024. Tech Policy Press, LAION-5B, Stable Diffusion 1.5, and the Original Sin of Generative AI. (Article).

  • 2024. LEONARDO, Infinite Barnacle: The AI Image and Imagination in GANs from Personal Snapshots. (Abstract).

  • 2023. Tech Policy Press, Shedding a Light on Shadow Prompting. (October 2023) (Article).

  • 2023. The New Real (University of Edinburgh & Alan Turing Institute) Artist’s Roundtable - The artists’ take on Generative AI with Lex Fefegha, Eryk Salvaggio, Caroline Sinders and Amelia Winger-Bearskin. (Link).

  • 2023. Tech Policy Press, What the WGA Strike Tells Us About Workers Navigating Generative AI. (Sept. 2023) (Article).

  • 2023. Tech Policy Press, A New Contract for Artists in the Age of Generative AI. (August 2023) (Article).

  • 2023. Tech Policy Press, How User-Designed Social Media Could Create Healthier Online Communities. (July 2023) (Article).

  • 2023. ACM Interactions, Seeing Like a Dataset: Notes on AI Photography. (May 2023). (Article).

  • 2023. IMAGE Journal, How to Read an AI Image.

  • 2023. The Posthumanist, The Emergent Sound of Worlding: On Listening to Mushrooms.

  • 2022. Siegel Family Endowment Insights, AI as Multidimensional Infrastructure.

  • 2022. Torque Editions, with Furtherfield (London). “Nothing to See Here, or: The Generated Poetry of Image Classification Tools Describing Coronavirus Stock Photography” in Frankenstein Reanimated: Conversations with Artists in Dystopian Times.

  • 2021. Patterns, Cell Press Journal: “The Bird is not the Migration Data: Insights from an Artwork Exploring Machine-Animal Collaboration.”

  • 2021. “A Total Portrait With No Omissions: Photogrammetry ‘at the point of a singular horizon’.” Exhibition Text for Ren Gregorčič & M16 Art Space (Canberra, Australia).

Publications
(Since 2021)

Talks & Presentations

  • 2024. Unsound Music Festival: The Age of Noise. Panelist, Dissonant Cartomancies.

  • 2024. Tech Together Conference for Public Interest Technology: Technology, Art and the Public.

  • 2024. Gray Area Festival. Human Presentation.

  • 2024. AI Technology in Art: Creative Tool or Threat? Panel Discussion at Bunjil Place, Melbourne, with Dr. Betty Sargeant, Matt Gingold, Mez Breeze & Dr. Pierre Proske.

  • 2024. Design Research Society Conference (DRS2024) Keynote with Beth Coleman, RESISTANCE: Alternative Reimaginings of AI. (Link).

  • 2024. ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT 2024) panel, Generative AI Labor Impacts: A Time Capsule of Workers’ Stories with Tamara Knees, Xiaowei R. Wang, Alex Hanna, Ph.D., Clarissa Redwine, Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, Kristen Sheets, and Taehee Whang.

  • 2024. Panel presentation with Andrea Wallace, “Generative AI and the Automation of Labour,” University of Cambridge, co-presented by the Center for Digital Humanities and the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence.

  • 2024. Artist Talk, Watershed, Bristol, UK.

  • 2024. Artist Talk, Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen (Germany), “The Inner Lives of AI Images.”

  • 2024. Talk & Workshop, Making Machines Make Mistakes Making Music, Music Current Contemporary Arts Festival, Dublin.

  • 2024. Talk, How Should We Look at Datasets in the Age of Generative AI? Interdisciplinary Input From The Humanities, Social Science, and Design, Center for Digital Ethics and Policy, Loyola University, Chicago. (Link)

  • 2024. Talk, UC Fresno AI or Not AI? Art Education Lecture Series. (Link)

  • 2024. Talk, Cybernetic Encounters: Creative Research. Australian National University, School of Cybernetics, Canberra.

  • 2024. Talk, How to Read an AI Image & The Creative Misuse of AI. Australia Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne.

  • 2024. Talk, The Age of Noise, Australia Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (Link).

  • 2024. Talk & Performance, Creative Misuse of AI, Art Gallery of Guelph w/ Arts Everywhere & Musagetes Foundation. (Upcoming).

  • 2024. Talk, Wikimedia NYC Wikiday, Swimming in the Tensions: Art, Archives, and Data. Columbia University, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, New York City. (Link).

  • 2023. Workshop, Uroboros Festival, Performative Dialogues with AI: Models for Making Distance. Prague, Czech Republic.

  • 2023. Class Lecture for Dr. Avijit Ghosh, Responsible Machine Learning Course @ Northeastern University: Ethical AI Art?

  • 2023. Course Lecturer, Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Master in Design for Responsible AI.

  • 2023. Presenter, with Miguel Sicart at University of Copenhagen: Critical AI & Artistic Interventions.

  • 2023. Presenter, Story&Code: Tension Mapping AI for Artists. New Museum, with New Inc. NYC.

  • 2023. Panelist, NYC Symposium: Generative AI & the Creativity Cycle, Creative Commons. NYU, NYC. (Link)

  • 2023. Panelist & Organizer, Creative Misuse of AI Systems, DEFCON 31 AI Village, Las Vegas.

  • 2023. Guest Lecture: Data & Creativity, for the AI, Ethics & Society Master’s Course, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge, UK.

  • 2023. Artist Talk: Flowers Blooming Backwards Into Noise. Forking Room, Seoul.

  • 2023. Presentation, University of Maine: The Generative World: How AI is Already Disrupting Familiar Careers.

  • 2023. Interview with AI Art Today, Twitter Spaces. (Link)

  • 2023. SXSW Panelist, Can there be AI Art without an Artist? with Avijit Ghosh.

  • 2023. New Paradigms: Responses from Media Studies towards a ‘New Paradigm’ of Image Production. University of Tubingen.

  • 2022. AIxDesign, AIxDesign Conversations #1. (Link)

  • 2022. SPACE10, Navigating AI: Creativity and Design (with Carla Diana). (Link)

  • 2022. Postapocalyptic Encounters, discussing Sympoietic Mycology (with Agata Siniarska). (Link)(Video)

  • 2022. RSD11, Relating Systems Thinking and Design Conference, United Kingdom. Toward Ontogenetic Resilience (Presenter); NewMacy in the 21st Century (Panelist); Pandemic of Today’s AI (Panelist); Art as Steersmanship (Panelist); Sympoietic Mycology (Co-Presenter).

  • 2022. ISSS, International Society for the Systems Sciences. Ontogenetic Resilience. (Link)

  • 2022. ISSS, International Society for the Systems Sciences. Pavilion for Listening to Electric Mushrooms. (Link)

  • 2021. Melbourne Design Week: Telstra Creativity and Technology Lecture. Keynote Presentation video with ANU’s Ellen Broad. (Link)

  • 2021. New Commons Project, University of Maine. Keynote talk: Nobody is Always Watching You: From Big Brother to Big Data. (Link)

  • 2021. RSD10, Relating Systems Thinking and Design Conference, The Netherlands. Technology for Living: NewMacy in the 21st Century. (Link)

  • 2021. RSD10, Relating Systems Thinking and Design Conference, The Netherlands. Designing Learning Spaces: Embracing playing with tensions. (Link)

  • 2021. American Society for Cybernetics. Tackling the Pandemic of Today’s AI.

  • 2020. Women in Ethical AI Conference.

  • 2020. RightsCon. Panelist, Creative Strategies for Algorithmic Resistance. (Link)

  • 2019. Swissnex San Francisco. Machine, Myself & I conference. Developed AI Art Workshop & Machinafesto. (Link)

  • 2019. Gensler San Francisco. Panelist, Designing the Unexpected. (Link)

  • 2019. Web Conference. Presentation of Infomesh Project for ECAL.

  • 2018. EVOLVE Conference. University of St. Gallen (HSG) Switzerland. Rethinking the Blockchain for Social Good.

  • 2018. CODAME Art + Tech Conference. Mental Work.

Teaching

  • 2024. Instructor, University of Malaga, Digital Art History Summer School: Sustainability and Politics of AI.

  • 2023. Organizer and artist, ARRG! : Algorithmic Resistance Research Group exhibition, DEFCON 31 AI Village, Las Vegas.

  • 2023. Story & Code Workshops, with SubLab and AIxDesign. Public Workshop Series on AI tools for creative professionals working in storytelling & animation. Developed & co-lead 4 workshops and 8 discussion sessions.

  • 2023. Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Masters in Responsible AI Design, Lecturer: Machine Learning & Ethics, Machine Learning & Creativity, Histories of AI.

  • 2023. Bradley University. Systems at Play. Course designer & lecturer exploring complex systems through values sensitive design for video games. Masters course.

  • 2023. Bradley University. AI Image Generation: Practical and Critical Approaches. Course designer & lecturer. Undergraduate course.

  • 2023. Rochester Institute of Technology. Game Design & Development II. Undergraduate course.

  • 2022. Rochester Institute of Technology. Introduction to Interactive Media Design. Undergraduate course.

  • 2022. Bradley University. A Swim in the Pale in the Rain. Course designer & lecturer. Masters-level class on meaning making in interactive media, focused on Disco Elysium.

  • 2021. Bradley University. Game Design and Theory. Masters-level class on Values Sensitive Design for interactive media and games.

  • 2020. California College of Arts (CCA), Cartographies of Collaboration. Guest lecture for Future of Work program. (2018, 2019).

  • 2019. ECAL (Lausanne University of Art and Design, Switzerland). Curriculum development, History of the World Wide Web for Interactive Design students. Culminated in Infomesh, a student-led interactive web art project supported by Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive.

Workshops & Events

  • 2024. Tech Together Conference for Public Interest Technology, NYC: Defining the Public in Public AI Infrastructure.

  • 2024. Instructor, Gray Area, San Francisco: Critical Image Synthesis Workshop.

  • 2024. Talk & Workshop, Making Machines Make Mistakes Making Music, Music Current Contemporary Arts Festival, Dublin.

  • 2023. NYU Digital Theory Lab, Seeing Like a Dataset.

  • 2022. Swissnex San Francisco, created and lead a Values Sensitive Design Foresight Workshop, From Disconnection to Collaboration: Cultivating Cooperative Capacities for Sustainability, focused on collaborations between US & Swiss universities around UN climate change goals.

  • 2022. Australian National University School of Cybernetics & National Gallery of Australia: On Cybernetic Art. Design workshop for NGA anniversary event with BoHo Interactive.

  • 2019. Swissnex San Francisco. Conference organizer: Dying Tomorrow: The Future of Death, Grief, and Mourning. (Link).

  • 2018. Swissnex San Francisco. Design Workshop Lead, Mediaspora: Media, Medicine, and Diaspora. Developing health communication technology prototypes for migrant populations in Switzerland and the US.

  • 2018. Swissnex San Francisco. Pier 17 Science Studio. 14-day training “boot camp” for early-career Swiss scientists and artists exploring cutting-edge storytelling techniques, including VR, AR, gaming, immersive experiences and installations, filmmaking, and social media. (Link)

Residencies

  • 2024. Brown University, Choreodaemonics, lead by Laurel Lawson & Sydney Skybetter.

  • 2023. Brown University, Choreodaemonics, lead by Laurel Lawson & Sydney Skybetter.

  • 2021. Media Enterprise Design Lab Residency, UC Boulder and King’s College London: Excavations: Governance Archeology for the Future of the Internet. (Link)

Teaching,
Workshops
& Events

2024

  • Aksioma, Unreal Data with Nadia Berger: Unmasking AI’s Pixel Puppetry. Podcast Interview. (Link).

  • Urgent Futures Podcast with Jesse Damiani, with Caroline Sinders. (Link)

  • Australian National University, Algorithmic Futures Podcast: The Art of Artificial Intelligence. (Link)

  • Interviewed by Tamara Knees for Bits in the Machine: A Time Capsule of Worker's Stories in the Age of Generative AI, published by the DAIR Institute, Collective Action School and Collective Action in Tech. (Link)

  • FedScoop, Child sexual abuse material found on popular dataset shows risks for federal AI research, by Rebecca HeilWeil. (Link)

2023

  • Wired Magazine, Sex, Drugs, and AI Mickey Mouse, by Kate Knibbs. (Link).

  • Wired Magazine, Getty Images Plunges into the Generative AI Pool, by Lauren Goode (Link).

  • Wired Magazine, The Battle Over Books3 Could Change AI Forever, by Kate Knibbs. (Link).

  • Interview with Terry Nguyen, Dirt Magazine. (Link)

  • Article on +RAIN AI Film Festival with Xavi Serra, Ara (in Catalan).

  • Interview w/BBC Radio 4, The Digital Human, “Generations.” (Link)

  • The Data Fix with Mel Hogan, Soulless. Podcast interview. (Link)

2022

2002

Press

Covering my roles as an artist and AI researcher. Slowly building out the archive: for now we have the most recent and the very first.