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Artificial Artificial Intelligence: In conversation with Lucas LaRochelle
3 March 2023 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am AEDT
Join Lucas LaRochelle in conversation about their creative digital work QT.bot, an artificial intelligence generating speculative queer and trans futures, with ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Ash Watson.
QT.bot is an artistic elaboration of a digital archive, a creative query of data, an engagement with neural networks that produces illusory memories and amplifies the potential of failure and the fantastic. An innovative line of flight within LaRochelle’s broader engagements with LGBTQ2IA+ life, this queer use of machine learning is a rich illustration of the creative and affective possibilities of artificial intelligence technologies. Experience the first video output of the project, titled Sitting here with you in the future.
QT.bot is a creative adaptation of the Open AI GPT-2 text generation model and a StyleGAN (implemented by machine learning engineer Mattie Tesfaldet). The text model is trained on trained on more than 82,000 posts from the queer community archive and mapping platform Queering the Map (queeringthemap.com), and the image model on scraped Google Street View imagery taken from the tagged coordinates of Queering the Map posts. Queering the Map is a community-generated counter-mapping platform on/with which visitors archive queer experience in relation to physical space.
Artificial Artificial Intelligence is a series of in-conversation talks about technology and fiction hosted by Dr Ash Watson of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Probing the porous boundaries between machine realities and imagination, the series features leading scholars from the humanities and social sciences who are changing what – and how – we know about emerging technologies.
Speakers
Lucas LaRochelle
Designer
Lucas is a Canadian designer and researcher whose work investigates queer and transgender digital cultures, community-based archiving, and co-creative media. Their work on Queering the Map has attracted global attention including an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica and being longlisted for the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards and the Lumen Prize for Digital Art. They have given numerous lectures and workshops on their work including for Stanford University and the Guggenheim Museum.
Dr Ash Watson
Research Fellow, UNSW Sydney
Ash Watson is sociologist of technology, fiction and DIY community practices based at the UNSW Sydney node of ADM+S. A Postdoctoral Fellow aligned with the Health focus area and People program of the Centre, she researches the social impacts of how automated decision-making and A.I. are imagined, designed and implemented across contexts of health and wellbeing. She also researches the digital-material spectrum of zine cultures, and queer digital archival practices.