In late October I was invited to be part of Dagstuhl Seminar 25442 on “Augmenting Human Creativity with AI”. The seminar, led by Tilman Dingler, Elisa Giaccardi, Steven Rick, and Irina Shklovski, was full of artists, HCI researchers, industry and commercial experts, educators, and design experts from many fields.

Together we explored core topics on:

  1. Critical Evaluation of AI-Enhanced Tools: Discuss and analyze the capabilities of AI tools that empower designers and creative professionals.
  2. Ethical Governance: Reflect on the ethical implications of integrating AI into creative processes, focusing on ensuring the responsible and equitable use of these technologies.
  3. Societal Implications: Examine the broader societal impact of delegating creative tasks to AI systems, including the potential consequences for the creative professions and cultural landscape.

I was invited to give an artist provocation, where I spoke about sociocultural values and their influence in the arts. When we aggregate data for AI systems and make decisions, we often reinforce social norms; how can we make sure that we are valuing creativity as a truly human activity and the importance of making “bad” art?

Our excellent seminar cohort on the iconic Dagstuhl steps.)

generating/un-generating music

In all of this, I also had the amazing opportunity for some impromptu jamming with Dave Murray-Rust (TU Delft) and Philippe Pasquier (Simon Fraser University), along with interactive visuals by Joe Lindley (Lancaster Uni)!

Dagstuhl Sessions Part 1 Visuals

Dagstuhl Sessions on Soundcloud

Generated visuals from our jam and audience video feed (all set up incredibly impromptu with great success!)
Our esteemed colleagues trying _very_ hard to get hearts to appear in the images generated from the video feed ❤️

photos

We really enjoyed the beautiful autumn weather in Saarland during this trip. I’m always happy to spend time back in this funny little slice of Germany (definitely made a pitstop in Saarbrücken before coming to the workshop) and to be connected with so many fabulous researchers who, above all, really care about designing meaningful interactions with technology.

Autumn Dagstuhl scenes, the ruins of the old castle, and the border between Saarland and Rhineland-Pfalz.

Hilariously, when going through the Dagstuhl registration process, I was able to find all the details of the retreat, ‘Next Steps in Body-Based Interaction’ that the Universität des Saarlandes teams (HCI Lab and senSInt) did back in October 2021! Being very German, Dagstuhl keeps a thorough record of everything that goes on at the centre. This means I was able to find some very adorable photos of the original senSInt group - Paul, Nihar, Dennis, and me - from back then. It’s good to see how far we’ve come and the difference between me standing on those Dagstuhl steps then and now! 😊

The UdS groups (top) and our original senSInt group (bottom) from October 2021
(photos Schloss Dagstuhl - LZI GMBH CC BY-NC-ND)