How Is Generative AI Transforming Art and Design?

Thursday, October 26, 2023 / 5:30pm
MIT Bartos Theater, E15-070 (Lower Atrium)
20 Ames Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

A roundtable discussion with experts working in architecture, art, design, computation, and robotics

Featuring

Moderator

Onur Yüce Gün, SM ‘06, PhD ’16
Director of Computational Design, New Balance

Panelists

Ziv Epstein, SM ‘19, PhD ‘23
multimedia artist and social science researcher

Ana Miljački
MIT Professor of Architecture and
Director, SMArchS Programs and SMArchS AD Program

Alex Reben, MAS ‘10
artist and roboticist

About the Event

Generative AI—those forms of artificial intelligence capable of creating artistic content, from text and images to audio and video—are transforming the way artists and designs think and create.

Join MIT faculty and alumni artists, designers, and researchers to reflect on the ways that AI is influencing artistic practice.


Co-presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT).

Thursday, October 26, 2023 / 5:30pm
MIT Bartos Theater, E15-070 (Lower Atrium)
20 Ames Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

About the Participants

MIT Alum Ziv Epstein, SM ’19 and PhD ’23, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Epstein’s work translates insights from design and the social sciences into the development of generative AI and social media platforms. He is also a practicing multimedia artist whose work has been featured at Ars Electronica, the MIT Museum, and Burning Man.

Website: zive.info
Social: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Google Scholar

MIT Alum Onur Yüce Gün, SM ’06 and PhD ’16, is the Director of Computational Design at New Balance, where he develops end-to-end computational design workflows and futuristic concepts. Trained as an architect, Gün is a seasoned computational design leader, researcher, and instructor.

Website: onuryucegun.com
Social: Instagram | YouTube

Critic, curator, and professor Ana Miljački teaches history, theory, and design in the MIT Department of Architecture. Her research interests range from the role of architecture and architects in Cold War-era Eastern Europe to theories of postmodernism in late socialism to the politics of contemporary architectural production. Miljački’s AI video installation, The Pilgrimage, is currently exhibited as part of Time Space Existence, presented by the European Cultural Centre during the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale (May 20—November 26, 2023).

Biography: MIT Architecture Department
Website: criticalbroadcast.net
Social: Instagram | YouTube

MIT Alum Alexander Reben, MAS ’10, is an artist whose work probes the inherently human nature of the artificial through a conceptual and process-driven approach. Reben uses experimentation and prototyping to delve into human relationships with algorithms, automation, and amplification through the lenses of absurdity, humor, mischief, and play. His artwork aims to engage the public with complex ideas in technology in an approachable way and to bring to light our inseparable evolutionary entanglement with technology, which shapes our existence.


Website: areben.com
Social: Facebook | InstagramTwitter | YouTube

About the Presenting Organizations

MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) 
CAST creates new opportunities for art, science, and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge, and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures, and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Website: arts.mit.edu/cast
Email: cast@mit.edu

CAMIT logo

Council for the Arts at MIT
The Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) was founded in 1972 by MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner to support the arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With its enthusiastic advocacy for all the arts at MIT, the Council’s mission is to act as a catalyst for the development of a broadly based, highly participatory program in the arts, firmly founded on teaching, practice, and research at the Institute, and to conduct arts-related fundraising activities on behalf of MIT.

Council members are alumni and friends with a strong commitment to the arts and serving the MIT community, and the Council’s programs are funded by the annual contributions of its members.

Website: arts.mit.edu/camit
Email: camit@mit.edu

About the Presenting Organizations

Up Next

Visit arts.mit.edu and mta.mit.edu for more information about upcoming performances, including:

X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The NationThe Front Porch Arts Collective
Staged Reading: February 19, 2023 / ArtsEmerson
The assassination of Malcolm X—both the story we think we know and illuminating details that have seldom been shared—is brought to vivid, lyrical life in award-winning writer Marcus Gardley’s new play. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar provides a framework for Gardley to deepen our understanding of one of America’s most complex, compelling historical figures and explore the tumultuous landscape of ideology and activism in the 1960s.

Hearing Amazônia
Performance: March 11, 2023 / MIT Kresge Auditorium
Multifaceted vocalist, music educator, and composer Clarice Assad composes a new musical work to be premiered by the MIT Wind Ensemble, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, and Vocal Jazz Ensemble. The student ensembles, directed by Frederick Harris Jr. and Laura Grille Jaye, are joined in performance by Assad and by assistant professor and violinist Natalie Lin Douglas. Amazonia sem lei addresses political issues related to–and celebrates the soundscape of–the Amazon rainforest.

Pamela Z
Concert: April 19, 2023 5:30pm / MIT Media Lab, Multipurpose room 6th floor
Artist Lecture/Demonstration: April 20, 2023 5:00pm / MIT Lecture Hall 26-100
A pioneering composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist for more than four decades, Pamela Z has toured to major festivals and venues worldwide. She works with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video, and is known for using custom music technology, activated by physical gesture, to explore deeply personal themes. The McDermott residency builds on Pamela Z’s prior visits to MIT in 2013 and 2016, during which she worked with students, fellow visiting artists, and other members of the campus community.

Boston Dance Theater and Khambatta Dance Company’s Bloom Residency Performance
Performance: March 11, 2023 8pm and March 12, 2023 7pm / The Dance Complex, 536 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Boston Dance Theater (BDT) will be performing alongside Khambatta Dance Company (KDC), from Seattle, WA, in the second half of a co-presenting relationship between the two companies. BDT performed in March 2022 at Seattle International Dance Festival, hosted by KDC, and in March 2023, KDC will be joining BDT in Boston for a week-long residency at The Dance Complex, when each performs selections from their own repertoire, in addition to a new work created during the residency.