Within the last year, the world has seen an explosion of creative machine technologies. Algorithms can now generate text, images, and videos close to what a human can create. This has more of us asking, “What does it mean to be creative? Where do these technologies fit into our human societies?”
In this workshop, we explore what creativity is, and what creative technologies would, could, or shouldn’t be. The workshop will be interactive and discussion-focused, guided by several experts who each bring their own perspectives and experiences.
APRIL 24, 7:00AM EST
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What is Creativity, Anyway?
Session abstract: What does it mean to be creative? In this session, speakers introduce several perspectives to give a bird’s-eye view of the concept of creativity. After all, creativity is not something exclusive to humans; we see it in animals, in biological evolution, and now, possibly, even in machines.
Chair: Christian Guckelsburger & Alyssa Adams
Speakers: Joseph Austerweil, Tim Otto Roth, Christian Guckelsburger, Simon Colton
APRIL 24, 23:00PM EST
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Human Roundtable on the Discussion of Future Hybrid Interfaces
Session abstract: Within the last year or two, creative technologies that leverage AI have become more popular than ever. They now– or will soon– play a prominent role in the creative process for many individuals with a wide range of backgrounds. In this session, participants will discuss their creative workflow and processes in all their diverse mediums and fields. How is AI technology used, how could it be used, or how shouldn’t it be used? After a break, the collective group will discuss how emerging technology could be designed to enable or support their workflows, perhaps generating a set of recommendations for ML engineers to design the next generation of tools.
Chair: Nicholas Guttenberg
APRIL 26, 19:00PM EST
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Navigating Indeterminacy & Experiential Experiment
Part 1: Navigating Indeterminacy
After rapidly rehearsing some fundamental mathematical, conceptual, and methodological challenges to present-day complexity science, we present possible alternatives for next-gen science of complex adaptive systems, drawing on Shannon, Wiener, Gill; Wittgenstein, James, Deleuze, Whitehead; Barad, Arendt; Stepney; Longo, Calude, Saari, Wolpert, Kauffman, and Montevil.
Part 2: Experiential Experiment
How to use computational media technologies as instruments to augment collective creative, enactive sensemaking by hybrid metabolic, social, and symbolic ensembles. Richly illustrated with examples from Synthesis and the Topological Media Lab.
Chair: Alyssa Adams
Speaker: Sha Xin Wei
APRIL 27, 1:00AM EST
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Impact & Interactions with Humans
Session abstract: Creative technologies are growing and changing faster than we can write laws about them or understand how they could change our everyday lives. What are the major ethical, usage, rights, responsibilities, ownership, and access challenges that we currently face and/or may face in the near future? What do we need to do today to try to prevent major catastrophes?
Chair: Mahdi Khosravy
Part One Speakers: Dilrukshi Gamage, Christian Guckelsberger, Minoru Kuribayashi
Part Two Speakers: Petra Jääskeläinen, James Boyd, Joel Lehman
APRIL 28, 8:00AM EST
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Creative Embodiment & the Creative Brilliance of Nature
Session abstract: Biology continually generates an endless number of bodies and structures, many of which are functional solutions to problems. How can we better understand biological creativity as a process that generates creative solutions to environmental problems, while also understanding the relationship between embodiment and the capacity and expression for creativity?
Chair: Lisa Soros
Speakers: Josh Bongard, Nick Cheney, Tim Taylor
Each day, a session will consist of a 30-60 minute talk(s), panel, or activity with a 60 minute discussion, a short break, with the remainder of the time given to small group discussions, games, or another activities.
'Creativity Unleashed' is the third annual workshop by Cross Labs, this year held virtually from April 24 – 28, 2023. The full schedule is available here (1.7Mb).
For those interested in attending, please contact Olaf Witkowski or Alyssa Adams.