18:00 – 18:45: Guided tour of the exhibitions Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 and Agnieszka Kurant: Risk Landscape.

19:00 – 20:30 : Conference: Creating with AI: Potential and Limits of Artistic Creation Using Artificial Intelligence Technologies
Hosted by Samuel Bianchini, artist and researcher, EnsAD

If artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword today, it’s because its uses are increasingly prevalent in various aspects of contemporary life. Whether at work, for leisure, research, the economy, education, transportation, media, or even our social interactions, we live in a world increasingly shaped – and even controlled – by digital technologies. AI technologies, driven by immense computing power and vast amounts of data accessible through networks and servers, are influencing numerous domains.

But what about artistic creation? Generative AI is now at the forefront, enabling the production of believable media content (texts, sounds, still and moving images). Computer-assisted design is also enhanced by these technologies. However, how do these tools impact the conception and realisation of works of art? Beyond the forms of digital media they enable, how can artists avoid reductionist tendencies and preserve the essence of art as a means of exploring new sensory forms and providing potential for aesthetic experience? How, like in robotics, can we engage with these software-driven technologies without losing sight of the materiality of our world?

How may we, in line with a necessarily ecological approach, reconcile the machine’s power with the ‘natural intelligence’ that surrounds us? How can we envision new forms of artworks that, far from being static, evolve with their environment? Drawing on practical artistic research, Samuel Bianchini will address these questions, presenting numerous examples of creating with – and sometimes against – AI, before opening up the discussion to the audience.

Biography

Samuel Bianchini is an artist and supervising researcher at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD) – Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL). He leads the Reflective Interaction research group at EnsadLab (EnsAD’s laboratory) on interactive systems and co-directed the Arts and Sciences Chair (2017–23) in collaboration with École Polytechnique (Saclay) and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.

With over 100 group exhibitions and 20 solo exhibitions, his works are regularly shown across Europe and worldwide. Advocating for an ‘operational aesthetics’, his creations involve physical and symbolic operations in public, real-time contexts, encouraging audiences to contemplate, reflect and act. In parallel with his artistic practice, Bianchini has developed a theoretical body of work through frequent lectures and numerous publications with publishers such as Éditions du Centre Pompidou, MIT Press, Naima, Riverside Architectural Press, Birkhäuser, Hermes, Les Presses du Réel, Springer, and Sternberg Press. Recently, he coordinated the special issue AI & Artistic Creation for the French Artificial Intelligence Association’s bulletin.