Friday 15 March 2024
Location: School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University
Event Type: In-person
Price: TBA
Open call deadline (extended): 15 March
When: 2-4 July 2024
Theme: ‘Controlling the Narrative’: Agency, Interaction and Influence in Creative AI and AI Cultures
Storytellers + Machines 2024 is a transdisciplinary conference based at SODA that champions the contributions of artists, creative practitioners and technologists, alongside other voices from academia, industry and cultural sectors in the lively and contested creative AI space.
Last year’s Storytellers + Machines showcased perspectives and ideas from UK and globally in a one-day creative AI symposium.
For this year’s conference we invite academics, artists and practitioners and experts from industry to submit 300-work proposals for papers, artworks and performances related to three overarching topics for discussion:
Theme 1: Agency
AI generative systems are possibly the first tools depicted as having their own creative agency. Yet, the philosophical distinctions between creators and their tools, audiences and their media are often blurred.
What kind of agency do audiences, authors and developers have when using generative and AI tools? Should we think in terms of control at all in these relationships and instead consider notions of collaboration, borderless synthesis of human and machine or something else?
Theme 2: Interaction
New forms of interaction and immersion for audiences are being invented through generative and AI controlled narratives, artworks and experiences. What are the emerging creative systems, aesthetics and relationships between audience and producers of these forms?
Theme 3: Influence
The influence that algorithmic systems exert on society, communities and identities, for example through algorithmic bias and corporate ownership, is increasingly well understood and documented in the media, academia and the software industry.
What are the socio-cultural and economic implications of such these influences on artistic and creative media producers and their audiences? And are there emerging strategies and tools that can be used to avoid, mitigate or otherwise challenge types of harmful influence and bias, particularly as they pertain to our narratives and media?
What we are looking for
Paper presentations, presented artworks and demonstrations that:
- Explore new forms of interaction and audience experience in generative and AI-based narratives and artworks
- Provide creative and technical case studies and frameworks relevant to generative and AI-based narratives and artworks
- Critically examine new generative AI narratives and artworks to provide insights into an emerging field of cultural production
- Investigate the social, economic, ethical and legal implications of AI-based narratives and artworks
- Promote new strategies and approaches to producing trustworthy AI in the context of creative works and their audiences
- Relate to the impact on marginalised communities and identities of AI and generative technology and the narratives it produces, both for creator and audiences
All presenters will have the opportunity to submit work for consideration in an edited collection of essays, case studies and interviews on creative AI to be published in 2025. Submit your paper, artwork or performance or technical demonstration:
Get in touch
If you have any questions related to the proposal, please contact the team at aistorytellers@mmu.ac.uk
