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Artists’ Take on AI + the Environment
Artists Angie Abdilla (ANU), Laresa Kosloff (RMIT), Rebecca Najdowski (RMIT) in conversation with Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris (UNSW/ADM+S).
When the Buggles wrote their now infamously catchy Video Killed the Radio Star in 1979, they were apparently inspired by J.G. Ballard’s 1960 short story The Sound-Sweep. In both works, the protagonists are experiencing an era-defining transformation: the movement of art forms and rapid technological change. They sing, We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far… The same could be said for our current moment and the rise of generative and other AI technologies. Yet very little research is asking artists about their relationship to the intersection of art, these new automated technologies and their impacts on the natural world.
Welcome to an evening of film screenings and artist in-conversations with leading contemporary artists Professor Angie Abdilla (ANU), Dr Laresa Kosloff (RMIT) and Dr Rebecca Najdowski (RMIT), moderated by Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris (UNSW/ADM+S). Reworking the iconic synth-pop song, this evening shares insights into how contemporary artists are responding to the emergence of artificial intelligence, what creative practice reveals about the environmental implications of AI technologies, and how they variously use, avoid, challenge and critique the environmental dimensions of AI.
The event at Capitol Theatre is a rare chance to see these new and critical video works, and to hear from the artists, Angie Abdilla, Laresa Kosloff and Rebecca Najdowski, directly. Drawing from recent ADM+S research on the artistic strategies and ecological dimensions of these technologies as part of the special project, the artists will share the strategies, artistic methodologies and creative interventions they engage to consider the ecological and creative tactics of critical engagement with AI in media art today.
This event is part of a study conducted by Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris and Deborah Lupton as part of the ADM+S signature project ADM, Ecosystems and Multispecies Relationships.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Angie Abdilla
Professor Angie Abdilla palawa is the founder and director of Old Ways, New. In her various roles as a strategic designer, creative practitioner, and consultant, Angie advocates for Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and knowledge systems as foundational to technology automation through design and cultural practice. Her published research interrogates the praxis of Indigenous deeptime technologies and Artificial Intelligence, which continue to be informed by the Indigenous Protocols and AI working group (IP//AI), which she co-founded. As a creative practitioner, she works across film and video installation as an exhibiting artist. She created the company’s strategic design methodology, Country Centered Design, leading projects for the public and private sectors over the past decade. Angie continues to advise on the cultural and ethical affordances of automated systems and technologies internationally and locally.
Rebecca Najdowski
Dr Rebecca Najdowski is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist-researcher investigating how imaging technologies mediate nature and the climate crisis. Working with the materiality of analogue and digital processes, she alters habitual ways of seeing – and therefore relating to – nature. Based in Naarm/Melbourne, she is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University where she co-leads the Imaging Futures Lab, an international network exploring expanded imaging practices. Her work has been presented internationally, including at Museum Belvédère (Netherlands), Belfast Photo Festival (Northern Ireland), and the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Australia). Recent publications include co-editing Confronting the Climate Crisis: Activism, Technology and Ecoaesthetics (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025) and her monograph Ambient Pressure (Tall Poppy Press, 2023).
Laresa Kosloff
Dr Laresa Kosloff makes performative videos, short films, audio works and participatory artworks. Her practice examines representational strategies, each one linked by an interest in the body and its agency within the everyday. Some of her projects are structured around language, whilst others use slapstick physicality to communicate ideas. Recent projects include a series of satirical short films made from commercial stock footage purchased online. These films explore neoliberalism and corporate culture, ecological breakdown, the billionaire class, artificial intelligence and the military industrial complex. Her most recent film titled ‘The Bleaching’ premiered at e-Flux Screening Room in New York in 2024. Laresa is committed to not using AI within her art practice. She is a senior lecturer in RMIT School of Art and is represented by Sutton Gallery in Naarm.
Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris
Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris is an Australian and Swedish curator, writer and researcher with expertise in eco-aesthetics and specialisation in water. Based on Dharug and Gundungurra Country, she is a Senior Research Fellow at UNSW and part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Bronwyn maintains an independent curatorial practice and her first monograph was released with Routledge Environmental Humanities Series in 2024 and is titled The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water.