CALL OUT FOR ARTIST with experience in facilitation

Closing date for applications 28th February.

 

 

How do we put images and narratives of AI into a cultural context to allow for ‘new cultures of resistance’ to emerge?

 

 

The Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities (WEH), based at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, is looking for an artist with experience in facilitation and designing participatory practical workshops, to join an exciting public engagement project focused on important issues of AI governance called - “Critical Bestiaries of AI: Reimagining Monsters” - supported by TORCH via the Minderoo-Oxford Challenge Fund.

Project background
Working with researchers from the WEH, University of Oxford and the IT University of Copenhagen, the project's goal is to bring the publics’ attention to aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that require oversight and regulation. We will do this by creating an “AI bestiary”, a collection of AI beasts or monsters representing areas of AI technology that are in need of governance. Teams of Oxford researchers who work on AI from various perspectives (for example, those who create AI-based computer programs, or who look at ethical and social implications of introducing AI in society) and monster studies will create the bestiary during facilitated workshops with the artist and lead researcher.

This collection of AI monsters and their imagined features, behaviours and environments will be used as the basis for a series of workshops in Oxford primary schools where students will create their own AI monsters using processes and materials developed by the artist and lead researchers. The students’ work will then culminate in an exhibition in central Oxford. These school workshops will be facilitated by Oxford post graduate students.
The aim of the Bestiaries Project is to engage different audiences - academic researchers, primary school children and members of the general public - in thinking more critically about AI and its governance; where the gaps are, and how they can or should be filled.

Who we are looking for
We are looking for an artist who wants to work and think creatively with a team of academics to develop these monsters, and the methods and processes for how they can be represented using visual mediums. Ultimately creating materials for inspiration and use in making workshops with primary school students.
This is open to artist from any background or medium, but experience in facilitation and science engagement projects would be desirable. You could be a painter, illustrator, graphic designer, sculptor, designer, facilitator or any other visual art practitioner. You do not have to be an AI expert or scientist.
Period of engagement: 2 x 1 day long workshops (dates TBC) to create the beasts, with prep meetings before and after to create the material pack and process for school workshops (during summer term). The activity will take place from May 2022 onwards.
Fee: £1,500 (plus reasonable expenses and materials costs).

How to apply
Please send a CV/portfolio of relevant work and a short letter of interest (1 page of A4 max) or 5 minute audio file/video of yourself talking which highlights:
- What interests you about the project
- Your previous experience
- Which mediums you are comfortable working in, and how you would use them in this project.

Please email the above to weh@bdi.ox.ac.uk Closing date for applications 28th February.

 

 

Find out more about the Critical Bestiaries of AI: Reimagining Monsters project here.

This project is funded by the Minderoo AI Challenge Fund.