ALD News: Help me celebrate ALD25, catch up on AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares
Plus updates from the two events in York I went to this month
Hi there,
It’s sweltering here in ALD HQ, but I’m thinking ahead to the cooler days of October.
As I mentioned last night, I’m looking into the idea of curating an Ada Lovelace Day retrospective that gathers together your experiences of Ada Lovelace Day and looks at the impact it’s had on your lives and careers. In order to gauge the interest and find out whether enough people want to participate to make it feasible, I’ve put together a short survey:
I’m also interested to hear about any indie events you’ve got planned. Although I’m unable to organise Ada Lovelace Day Live this year, I’d encourage everyone to continue putting on their own local events and let’s keep the celebration going!
Meantime, here’s an update on some of the events I’ve been able to take part in this year, thanks to the generosity of everyone who donated to my GoFundMe.
AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares
Back in May, I was on the panel for the AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares event which was held as part of the King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence. I’m happy to say that you can now watch the recording at your leisure:
The rise of artificial intelligence is an enduring theme in science fiction and has long shaped how we imagine machine consciousness.
As AI moves from pop culture entertainment to an everyday reality, new narratives emerge. What stories are being told, both optimistic and dystopian, and what responsibilities do technologists, creators, and storytellers have to the future?
I was joined by science fiction writer Stewart Hotston, medical imaging PhD student Tiarna Lee, and Prof Kawal Rhode from the School of Biomedical Engineering, and was moderated by the Clarke Award’s Tom Hunter.
It was a huge amount of fun and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed having the conversation!
ABC: Art, biodiversity and collaboration
The University of York published a write-up of the ABC: Art, biodiversity and collaboration panel that I participated in at the beginning of the month.
This special session focussed on the interface between art and science in understanding and relating to biodiversity change. The aim of ecoscapes is to bring together ecologists and people from other disciplines to explore together the complex issues of biodiversity change and response in the Anthropocene.
You can also read my full write-up of the event, plus my visit to the sitcom archives of Ray Galton & Alan Simpson, over on the Fieldwork newsletter. And if you want to gist of what I said, you can watch the talk that I gave the Reading RSA meeting a few months ago, which was largely the same talk.
Artivism: Imagining Anthropocene Futures
Last week I was back up at the University of York for the Artivism: Imagining Anthropocene Futures day-long workshop, talking with a room full of other artists, writers and scientists about the way that art can form an integral part of climate and environmental activism.
This might sound like it's quite far away from the work that I've done with Ada Lovelace Day, but my eco-sitcom, Fieldwork, isn't just about the environment, it's about normalising women working in the field and encouraging women consider ecology as a career.
The day was fascinating and thought-provoking, and it was lovely to be in a room with a load of other artist-scientists amongst whom I felt very much at home. There was a lot of conversation about art-as-protest, why we make the art we make, the impact it can have (and how hard it can be to measure genuine impact given there’s no metric for inspiration), and the common challenge we all face, ie lack of funding.
It was both heartening and depressing to see so many other people struggling with funding, and having to cobble together money from multiple small grants, crowdfunding, etc, or having to consign art-making to hobby status. It’s nice to know I’m not alone, but also sad to see that so many people are in the same boat.
One idea I loved was to move away from artistic residencies and towards longer-term partnerships that foster more durable relationships between scientists (or any other kind of institution) and artists, to support artists in developing their practice over years rather than months, and provide more stability. Given that arts funding is nigh on impossible to get these days, some other kind of model is going to have to come from somewhere, preferably a larger organisation capable of applying for the kinds of grants that are either too onerous for artists or not open to them.
That’s it for this month!
All the best,
Suw