AI Murmurings

An exploration of the multifaceted artistic practice of Margret Wibmer, whose work—spanning sculpture, video, photography, and participatory performance—facilitates dynamic, generative relationships between bodies, objects, and spaces. Powerful carriers of both presence and absence, the physically tangible and the unquantifiable, her artworks challenge perceptual and experiential frameworks—inviti...

In this generous conversation, artist Tania Candiani shares her vision of enlivening contemporary science and technology with “big doses of beauty and poetry and magical connection”—pointing to ways she seeks to do so through her practice. Inciting elaborate collaborations across disciplines, Candiani’s meticulous (yet at times serendipitous) approach to research is above all an act of listening:...

What if we could teach AIs to sing frequencies of repair and healing? This fascinating window into the world of artist Pia Lindman helps recalibrate understandings of what technology is and can be. She introduces a realm she calls the ‘subsensorial’ and describes the deeply embedded environmental awareness she has cultivated to navigate the entangled realities of a planet in crisis. Traversing sub...

In her stunning artistic and filmmaking work, Saodat Ismailova paints a vivid, multidimensional tableau of the pasts, presents and possible futures of Central Asia. Her intricate visual and sonic layerings of histories, myths, and both inner and outer landscapes serve as sites of knowledge transmission and also as spaces for ‘radical re-remembering’ that, in the words of decolonial thinker Rolando...

In the 1970's and '80's, the Swiss artist Heidi Bucher summoned a future that we only now are beginning to grasp. Her latex skinning actions and sculptures promised emancipation from patriarchy and the social body politic, and at the same time were fertile sites of ‘magical transfer’ to as-yet-unimagined worlds. Curator and art historian Chus Martínez helps us locate the ‘underground rivers’ of He...

In this exciting conversation with Brazilian artist Camila Sposati, we map her dynamic practice of (slow-ly) digging into the ground and into the unknown to reveal and weave together layers of identity, bodies, artifacts – and also energy. Could the multiple meanings and interpretations that her practice unearths and the ‘thick visioning of caring’ it models be a roadmap for the near-future of our...

How to imbue AIs with an enlivened sense of space? Architect and practice-based researcher Renske Maria van Dam challenges normative spatial paradigms with situated interventions that extend the sensorium and help our bodies access new realms of energy. The conversation here explores the ‘soft shifts’ afforded by Japanese approaches to space—including the enigmatic spatio-temporal interval ma—, th...

What if our technologies were spilling over with joy and abundance and messiness and fierce feminisms? The generous ideas shared here by artist Sands Murray-Wassink are light on AI but go heavy on how we (and our technologies) might be enriched—queered— by a more open, horizontal and intersectional approach. While far-reaching, the conversation is anchored by Sands’ recent project collaboration Gi...

From the delicate unfolding of a tiny leaf to visions of blossoming skyscrapers, this inspired conversation with interdisciplinary artist Maria Blaisse and composer Kate Moore brings us all a step closer to a more harmonious future with AI. Through their respective languages of form and music, Maria and Kate share how their practices have afforded them glorious glimpses of a larger ‘intelligence’...

What if we approached AI from an interdependent, intergenerational perspective? With their joint project The Court of Intergenerational Climate Crimes, Jonas Staal and Radha D’Souza propose new artistic and legal imaginaries that both interrogate and aim to dismantle the structures and mentalities that have brought humans and non-humans alike to the brink of extinction. How do those same forces pe...

From the poetics of matter to ‘machines of loving grace,’ this conversation with artist Oscar Santillán charts a course through subtly networked ecologies of knowledge—and the unknown—that he calls ‘Antimundo.’ He describes how his practice is animated by research into technologies both ancient and emerging, ponders noise as a strategy for AI, and explains how an indigenous coding device from the...

Can embracing the world in billion year chunks help us navigate the future of AI? In an inspired conversation with Dakin Hart, Senior Curator at the Noguchi Museum in New York, this episode focuses on the life and work of Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Covering topics both earthbound and cosmic, we ponder the past, present, and possible future(s) of humanity through Noguchi’s lens of hy...

In this episode, dance artist and software engineer Siobhán K Cronin evokes spaces where the imaginations of artists and engineers can meet and collaborate. We discuss expanded practices of listening and ways to scale technological systems with care, as well as Siobhán’s forays into posthumanism that include dancing with the networks of an aspen stand, dreams of robotic companionship, and becoming...

This compelling and far-reaching conversation with Monica Narula of Raqs Media Collective explores themes of belonging, Not-Knowing, and machines as the materialization of desire. The discussion touches on Raqs projects old and new – including the 11th Yokohama Triennial they recently curated in Japan – and offers reflections on both the intensity of our present moment and the ‘afterglow’ we might...

This conversation with Stephanie Rosenthal, director of Gropius Bau in Berlin, delves into the topic of Care in the institution’s recent programming. We hear about the diverse forms through which Care is expressed by artists, their intended healing effects on both visiting publics and the building itself, and how such artistic practices might inspire new directions for emerging technologies like A...

An intimate and inspiring conversation with artist Rory Pilgrim and poet and disability advocate Carol R. Kallend. Together we explore their hopes for more conscious, creative, and caring relationships with robotic technologies. Leading into the podcast are gorgeous vocals by Robyn Haddon from the track ‘Erase’ that she co-wrote with Pilgrim for his 11-part music video album Software Garden (2016-...

In this episode, artist and composer Jem Finer discusses his 1000-year-long music composition, Longplayer. He talks about his artistic process, ruminates on the value of the 'unknowable,’ and shares thoughts on what AI could learn from the artwork's unique approach to both temporality and community. image: Jem Finer, sketch of Longplayer's orbits