Technology shapes our sensory experiences and extends our cognitive and bodily capabilities. Its pervasive influence coupled with the ever-expanding reach of artificial intelligence across diverse facets of society underscores the urgent need for comprehensive exploration, experimentation, and discussion. Machine learning advancements, while offering unprecedented tools and opportunities, also raises profound ethical dilemmas, blurring the boundaries between reality and artificiality. It is urgent that this technology be explored and experimented with and discussed from various angles.

This conference seeks to explore the intricate relationship between artistic expression and emerging media technologies, particularly focusing on machine learning and virtual environments. By scrutinizing this alliance, our aim is to unpack the myriad challenges and novel responses it presents to contemporary issues spanning ethical, social, political, and economic domains. The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence elicits a spectrum of reactions, ranging from utopian optimism to dystopian apprehension. Generative AI programs can be a useful tool for the artist, and simultaneously a threat to creative careers. Algorithmic technologies have the potential for AI models to generate creative content, or for creative users to generate “collaborations” with machines, such as transhumanist art, reflecting the ideas of Marshall McLuhan that technology is extending human bodies, reflecting a proactive vision of the future while attempting to address both the positive and negative impacts on society. We aim to delve into the creative intersections of media art, immersive technologies and virtual environments, and machine learning through the creative lens of the artist.
What virtues might survive or thrive in our art worlds through these changes?
What virtues may be retained and strengthened through artistic interventions and explorations of these changes?

We invite submissions of abstracts for 20-minute presentations and practice-based projects on diverse topics encapsulated by our overarching theme of "Artificial Atmospheres and Unexpected Media." Potential areas of exploration include:

-Collaborating with machines and the nature of consciousness
-AI, Art, and Archives
-Transhumanism and creativity
-AI as a creator and disrupter
-Ethics of AI usage, potentials to help or harm, transparency, bias, and fairness
-AI aesthetics and the uncanny
-Interactive and Immersive Art and Technology
-Robotics and Kinetic Art with AI
-Data driven and sonification
-Technology and the future of human agency in creativity
-Creative technology and utopia/dystopia
-Cyborg theories and science fiction predictions
-Weaponization and creation with machine learning
-Poetics and Prompting
-Unexpected Media
-Machine collaboration


We welcome submissions from academics, researchers, and artists. Creative practitioners are encouraged to submit works using machine learning and new media, as well as those involved in AI production or utilization. Selected works will be showcased, along with papers, at the conference.

Proposals will be accepted until June 10th, 2024.

Please send us a 250-word abstract, along with a 150-word bio and 5 keywords, to the following email: artificialatmospheresconf@gmail.com

Registration fee: 50 euros (standard rate).

Conference organizers: Patrícia Castello Branco (CineLab - IFILNOVA); Maile Colbert (CineLab -IFILNOVA)

About IFILNOVA-CineLab’s working group in Art and Technology:
The Art and Technology working group focuses on exploring the relationships between artistic practices and the development of new technologies. Its main aim is to critically analyze, assess and discuss the ways the alliance between art and technology poses new challenges and offers new ways to respond to contemporary issues related to social, political, and economic paradigms, such as social justice, ecological sustainability, and economic development.