AI: Means of Emancipation or Dystopia?

Artificial intelligence systems are evolving at a rapid pace, yielding huge profits and powers to the corporate giants that invest in them. At the same time they offer new tools in a number of fields, including the field of art creation. Artists already use such systems to produce new works, while the jobs of their colleagues in the film and recording industries are threatened precisely by the implementation of these systems. Issues that related to copyright, the risk of personal data, the control of personal life, the uncontrolled growth and development of artificial intelligence systems are on the conferences’ agenda, while at the same time artificial intelligence opens up new avenues of artistic expression, creating a wave of creativity, innovation and research.

A prominent application of artificial intelligence in art is the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs). Artists and technologists collaborate to train algorithms on massive datasets of existing artworks, allowing AI to imitate and create new artworks in a similar style. This process has led to the development of visual artworks that challenge traditional notions of inspiration and artistic authority, blurring the boundaries between human creation and that of the machine.

In this context we attempt to deepen the discussion around the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence. While offering new ways and means of creating and appreciating art, it also raises questions about the role of technology in creative free expression, the ethical implications of art
manufactured by artificial intelligence and the future of kinds of synergy between humans and machines.

First Panel 4-5.30 pm:
Art and Artificial Intelligence. New possibilities and new challenges

Speakers:

Yiorgos Drosos,
“GaUNs* + A.I. Art and Technologies of Artificial Intelligence”.

*GANs: Generative Adversarial Networks
New Media Artist, Special Education Staff, New Media Lab, Dept
Visual and Applied Arts AUTH

Dimitris Ioakeimidis (Jo Di),
“Artificial Intelligence as a Catalyst for Social and Political Change through Art”
Dentist – Content Creator
Fanourios Moraitis (Nourako),
“Large Language Hallucinations” Reference to how LLMs (Large
Language Models) work
Assistant Professor of Digital Sculpture, ASFA

Kostis Stafylakis,
“Homegrown AI: all we want!”
Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, Expanded Media and Forms, Department of Fine Arts, Athens School of Fine Arts

Faye Tzanetoulakou,
“Technological Sublime”
Doctor of Art History, AUTH, Post-doctoral Researcher, UTH, Teaching Staff at UNIWA

The moderator of the panel is Journalist and Curator Dimitris Trikas
—–
Second Panel 6-7.30 pm:
Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Oligarchies: How New Technology is Intervening in Knowledge and Power Relations

Speakers:

Yanis Varoufakis,
“Are We Socializing Artificial Intelligence? Or are we dying as a species? Here’s the dilemma“
Doctor of Economics, Professor University of Athens, Secretary General MeRA25. Former Member of the Greek Parliament and Minister of Finance

Yiannis Mitrou,
“The “big data” as a political condition: Digitality and the Unconscious”
Doctor of Philosophy, Psychoanalyst, visual artist

Dimitris Sarafianos,
“Ex machina ars. Cuius est? Who does it belong to?”

Doctor of Law, Art Critic, Director of Lofos Art Project

Georgia Skartadou,
“Counter-trained Vision”
Researcher, Member of Forensis

Aristotle Tympas,
“On the Invisible Shaping of Algorithms and Big Data: Sexist, Racist, ecocidal and class biases”
Professor of the History of Technology in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Director of the English-language interdepartmental MA of Science, Technology and Society, University of Athens

The moderator of the panel is Journalist Kostas Raptis
Supervisor of the event: Faye Tzanetoulakou

The event will be broadcasted livestream on the page of the Center for Post-Capitalist Civilisation on social media https://www.facebook.com/metacpc

In the framework of the International Museums Day, in the basement of the exhibition space will be presented the video installation
“OPEN THE BLACK BOXES” by the visual artist Danae Stratou, following the open online invitation: https://opentheblackboxes.org/invitation-in-the-era-of-ai-labour-relationships-and-the-human-creativity/
The words collected through the OPEN CALL_IN THE ERA OF AI, will to be used for the video piece, as a participatory digital art project, a collaboration of Danae Stratou and the non-profit organization Vital Space, a global, interdisciplinary, cross-media artistic platform that deals with pressing issues of our time. The project is based on the principle of “think global – act local”. It invites people all over the world to submit a Single Word to the website in response to one of two questions:
“What threatens you the most?”
“What are you most eager to preserve?”

We live in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Technology gallops, bringing cataclysmic changes in the production process, labor relations, artistic creation. Automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence are changing everything in the way we work, in the way we express our creativity.
But we must not forget: the opaque design, the ownership of the technology and the ways of using it, are what determine the mark of its consequences in our lives. However, the discussion on this very important issue has so far been absent from the public sphere and from political dialogue.

SPEAKERS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Yanis Varoufakis was born in 1961 in Athens. He is an Economist, Professor, author.
He studied mathematics and economics in Britain, where he taught at the universities of Essex, East Anglia, Glasgow, and Cambridge, before “immigrating” to Australia, as a Professor at the University of Sydney.
In 2000 he returned to Greece and took up the position of Professor of Economic Theory at Athens University. In the period 2012-2014 he taught at the University of Texas, Austin.
In January 2015, he was elected Member of Parliament, garnering the most votes in the country, and took over as Minister of Finance. After five and a half months of hard work of confrontations with the troika, on the evening of the referendum of July 5, 2015 he resigned as a minister and continued his confrontation with the policies that reproduce the crisis on a pan-European level.
On February 9, 2016 in Berlin, with European politicians and intellectuals,
co-founded the Movement for Democracy in Europe DiEM25. In 2019, MeRA25, the
Greek electoral arm of DiEM25, entered the Parliament with 9 seats.

Yiorgos Drosos is a visual artist. He teaches at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in the laboratory “New Media in Visual Arts”. He specializes in New Media, image and sound. The core of his work is the correlation of movement with space and time. He has 6 solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. He has created educational applications and has supported two museums, the State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Natural History. 

Dimitris Ioakeimidis was born in 1982 in Nea Ionia, Magnesia. He graduated from Dental School of AUTH in 2008.
He moved to the Netherlands in 2010, working as a dentist in Groningen and the The Hague, while since 2021 he has also taken over the management of the emergency dental clinic of Westeinde Hospital incidents. Outside of the professional course, he engages with music and online content creation.
He created one of the first blogs in Greece and since 2013, through the website jodi.graphics informs and comments on political events in Greece and Europe.

Yiannis Mitrou is Dr. Philosophy, visual-performance artist, director and
theorist of Contemporary art and Psychoanalysis. He taught for the last five years at School of Fine Arts of AUTH, Department of Visual and Applied Arts and teaches at Interdepartmental master’s programs Art theory and psychoanalysis and artistic practices.
Studies: 1996, Bachelor of Science, Aristotle University, Department of Physics /
1996-97, Master’s courses in theoretical physics on Chaos, Department of Physics, AUTH/ 1997-99, Scholarship for original scientific research, Nuclear Fusion Institute
at Orsay, Paris-Sud / 2005, Master of Systematic Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and of Pedagogy, AUTH / 2010-2013, Teaching Psychoanalysis, Faculty of Educational Reason, Educational Society of Northern Greece / 2014-2017, Training under supervision as a psychoanalyst / 2017, PhD: “Phenomenology of the Unconscious: The Lacanian Paradigm field”, in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy of AUTH with the departmentof Psychoanalysis, Paris VIII.
Research experience: 1997-99, work on the relationship between Art and Science in the context of of the scholarship from the Nuclear Fusion Institute of Paris-Sud / 2000-02: scientific advisor and manager of educational programs in Macedonian
Labor Institute / 2003: Founds the International Performing Arts Research Laboratory-Alma Kalma.
Artistic and scientific collaborations: 2013, Philosophical Research Laboratory in the Imaginary of AUTH, in collaboration with the Center de Recherche surl’Imaginaire, University Stendhal-Grenoble III / 2003, Research Institute of Performing Arts-J. Grotowski, Poland / 2005, Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Pondedera, Italy / 2012 -14, Department of Performing and Experimental Arts of the Art Academy of Moscow / 2018, Club Art Organization New Orleans, America / 2019, Artistic director of the organization: International Meeting Performance Art, parallel event of the International Short Film Festival of Drama.
The directions of his research concern the Philosophy of Art, Language and Politics in articulation with Phenomenology.

Fanourios Moraitis (Nourako) lives and works in Athens. His work is about
practices of post-digital plasticity and the study of algorithms as expanded
artistic processes. He has a degree in Electronic Engineering & Engineer
in Computer Science from the Technical University of Crete and obtained an MSc. in Art and Technology from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden with a scholarship from the A. S. Onassis Foundation.
He worked at the French National Institute of Informatics and Automation (INRIA) and studied at the Art Students League of New York. He is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he now teaches at the rank of Assistant Professor. He has exhibited in Greece and abroad and his works are in private collections.

Dimitris Sarafianos is a lawyer, Doctor of Law and Director of the Lofos Art Project.
He has been a member of the Board of Directors at the Athens Bar Board and Vice-President of the Hellenic Union for Human Rights. He is the Director-Legal Advisor of the Greek Collecting Society for Works of Visual Arts OSDEETE.
His articles have been published in Greek and English magazines and books.

Georgia Skartadou is a Researcher at the Forensis group, the sister organization of Forensic Architecture. She holds an undergraduate degree from the School of Architecture from Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki and a Master’s degree in Digital Arts from Ionian University. Her research activity focuses on the understanding of possibilities and limitations that new media/technologies provide to their claims of social interactions and interventions. Her experience on tools and practices comes from the professional occupation in the field of cinema and video games.

Dr. Kostis Stafylakis is a visual artist and art theorist with a PhD in Political Science from the Department of Political Sciences and History at Panteion University, Athens. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and he also holds an MA in Art Theory and an MA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Essex. His works often take the form of navigation through the online and physical space of fringe social groups. His published essays delve into the relation between the “mimetic”, the “social, and the ”the “political”. He has taught and lectured at undergraduate and graduate programs at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the University of Patras, the University of Western Macedonia and other institutions across Greece and Europe. He has been a post-doc researcher at ASFA and Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki. He was curator and co-curator of the Outburst of the digital swamp (Overkill festival, NL, 2023), the 6th Athens Biennale ANTI, the 4th Athens Biennale AGORA, Weasel Dance at Goethe-Institut

Athen, Twisting C(r)ash at the Batiment d’Art Contemporain Geneva, The Suspension of Litanies and Fuyuhiko Takata at ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture, and more. His most recent solo shows were GZPRM GOPNIK at KEIV Athens (2023), Chloroquine Juggalo at KEIV Athens (2021) and the two-person show Readiness: Civil War at Panke Gallery, Berlin (2022). His artistic activity includes participations at Prepper Paradise, Bureau Europa (2022), Bless’ed Curse by soloshow.online (2021), Toxicfest at Tick Tack Antwerpen (2021), Oblique Field (by Gossamer Fog, London, 2021), Enter: New Commissions by Onassis Foundation (2020), Kultursymposium Weimar (2019), the “Festival of Democracy” of Geneva (2017), Neue Ravensburger Kunstverein (2017), “Omonoia” 5th Athens Biennale (2016), 1st NSK Biennialof Folk Art (2014), Hell as Pavillion at Palais de Tokyo (2013), Truth is Concrete by Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2012), Monodrome 3rd Athens Biennale (2011), Media Impact at the 4th Moscow Biennial (2011) and more. 

Faye Tzanetoulakou holds a PhD in Art History, Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki. She is a University Scholar at the University of Thessaly.
She teaches the courses Social Function of Art, and Art and Materiality at
the University of West Attica, and is conducting Postdoctoral research at the School of Architecture at the University of Thessaly on contemporary Environmental Art.
She works as an Art Critic/Exhibition Curator, and is the Arts Editor at culturenow.gr
She has been Secretary General of the Greek Section of the International Association of Art Critics, AICA.
She is an environmental activist and supports the Zero Waste movement.

Aristotle Tympas is Professor of History of Technology in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Athens, with specialization in the study of Artificial Intelligence and energy transitions. With studies in Chemical Engineering at Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki, a Master’s degree and a PhD in technology-science policy and history – sociology of technology in the USA.
He is the director of the English-language Master’s program in the interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology, Society, member of the Gender Equality Committee of the University of Athens, vice president of research at the European Inter-University Association on Society, Science and Technology, and action chair at the European research network on the role of new technology in shaping European borders and immigration. He holded the chair of Tensions of Europe: Network on History, Technology and Europe. He was a visiting scholar at MIT.

The conference “AI: Means of Emancipation or Dystopia?” is organized by the meta | Center for Post-Capitalist Culture in collaboration with Lofos Art Project, Velvendou 39, Kypseli.