EU4ART_differences Doctoral Summer School
Creativity at the crossroads of neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Gaming, alternative economies and humanism, currently at the centre of the most topical debate, will be discussed in the mornings from 6 to 9 September 2022 by the most important voices on the international scene in a programme of online meetings, free of charge and open to the public. The series of meetings is part of the Doctoral Summer School Digital Rites and Embodied Memories, organised within the framework of the European project EU4ART_differences, funded by the HORIZON 2020 programme. During those days, a group of researchers from different European capitals will meet at the Casa San Silvestro Monastery in Monte Compatri. Their individual investigations will be presented in a collective project incorporated into forms of rituality that are contextually divided and symbiotically connected between physical and virtual space. The morning of 6 September opens the cycle with issues related to artistic enterprise in the light of developments in technology, in particular AI, led by Tom van de Wetering, Program Manager of the Entrepreneurship and Talent Program at HKU – Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht – Expertise Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship. Domenico Quaranta, an art critic and curator, and an expert in digital art, will move into the field of Blockchain, NFTs and art, drawing on twenty years of experience in curation and research in the field of digital art. Enrico Bisenzi, a pioneer of digital telecommunications since the pre-web era, now a Professor at the Academy in Rome, will address the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and copyright, starting with the changes in opportunities with the advent of Creative Commons. Adriano Bonafede and Gianluca Cannavale will present Patamu, the start-up that, by generating proof of authorship, allows works to be published and shared while protecting one’s creativity.
The day of 7 September begins with the relationship between video games and gamification for cultural heritage with Fabio Viola, one of the most influential designers in the world, who, after contributing to titles such as Fifa, The Sims and Harry Potter, was recognised with the “Design Lessons” award at the Fuorisalone in Milan in 2018. Immediately afterwards, Galit Ariel, a techno-futurist leader in the field of immersive technologies, explores the spatial dimension between the physical and digital worlds, between here and elsewhere.
The morning of 8 September is dedicated to neuroscience and humanism. Raitis Smits, a pioneering artist in digital arts experimentation and founding Director of the RIXC Center for New Media Culture (Riga), takes us into the new era of virtual experience, entertainment and storytelling and its impact on education, social policy and codified knowledge. Vittorio Gallese, neuroscientist and Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, who played an important role in the discovery of mirror neurons, has the difficult task of bringing the public closer to Embodied Simulation Theory. Roberto Casati, distinguished philosopher, Professor and member of various research institutes, illustrates how cognitive science intertwines with data consumerism with a corpus of visual experiments taken from Renaissance art.
On 9 September, the series of meetings concludes with Artificial Intelligence and art. Maurice Benayoun, new media pioneer, curator and theorist, investigates thought in motion in the translation of abstractions of the mind, such as human values (love, power, peace, knowledge) into forms of neuro-design, using Brain-Computer Interaction (BCI). Marco Mancuso, another illustrious voice in digital art studies on the international scene, explores dreams and nightmares, utopias and dystopias, freedom and constraints of the human being from the perspective of its transformation, from the perspective of the post-human and within a trans-disciplinary context between art, design, philosophy and critical theory. Ádám Albert, artist, educator and researcher, head of the Department of Artistic Anatomy, Drawing and Geometry at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and director of the Art and Art Theory College for Advanced Studies, addresses aspects related to production, including digital modelling and the generative creation of forms. The INOUT collective, made up of master’s students from the Academy of Rome, tutored by the artist Cinzia Pietribiasi, presents the first results of the Artificial Research / Artistic Intelligence project, which investigates the semantisation of artificial experiences with machine-learning technologies.
Programme
Tuesday 6 September: Artistic Entrepreneurship and New Technologies:
10:00-11:00. Tom van de Wetering: Multiplying Potential – How Arts Universities Can Help Students to Reflect on Their (Potential) Value Within and Beyond the Arts
11–12 noon. Domenico Quaranta: New Digital Economies? Blockchains and their (Uncertain) Futures
12:00 pm. Enrico Bisenzi: (NO) Copyright Strike
12:45 pm. Patamu.com: Protecting your Authorship
You can register for free here to follow online on the TEAMS platform
Wednesday 7 September: Gamification, Cultural Heritage and Creativity:
10:00 am – 11:00 am. Fabio Viola: Videogames and Gamification for and as Cultural Heritage
11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Galit Ariel: Possessed: New Body Spaces in Immersive Realms
You can register for free here to follow online on the TEAMS platform
Thursday 8 September: Neurosciences and Humanities:
10:00 am – 11:00 am. Raitis Smits: The Use of Immersive Technologies (VR and AR) in Arts
11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Vittorio Gallese: Embodying Images. Embodied Simulation and Aesthetic Experience
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm. Roberto Casati: Shadows in Painting
You can register for free here to follow online on the TEAMS platform
Friday 9 September: Artificial Intelligence and Art
10:00 am – 11:00 am. Maurice Benayoun: The New Values of Art: Transaction and Curation Redefine Blockchain and Unchained Art Practice.
11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Marco Mancuso: CHIMERA: Expanded Bodies and Identities Between Art, AI and Technoscience
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm. Ádám Albert, Kitti Harmati, Attila Mézes: Digital Form Creation Lab at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts
12:45 pm. INOUT: INOUT in Dialogue with UNIVERSON
You can register for free here to follow online on the TEAMS platform
The series of meetings is part of the Doctoral Summer School, Digital Rites and Embodied Memories, curated by Franco Ripa di Meana. In this context, EU4ART_differences launches its own portal on the Research Catalogue, a research tool used by artists, researchers and teachers, initiating the important partnership recently established between EU4ART_differences and the Society for Artistic Research (SAR).
The EU4ART_differences project focuses on the importance of artistic research with a view to cooperation between science and art, and in a broader sense, between the humanities and society.
EU4ART_differences is an EU-funded project aimed at developing and promoting high-level artistic research, with a transdisciplinary approach to society, knowledge and critical thinking. The project team, led by the HfBK in Dresden and supported by the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, the Art Academy of Latvia and the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, is collaborating on the construction of long-term research infrastructures and working on the design of new art education programmes for students and researchers.