TAS’ Creative Programme Lead, Steve Benford, Professor of Collaborative Computing at the University of Nottingham explained:
Professor Steve Benford demonstrating computer enhanced acoustic music at the TAS Showcase 2024
“This programme has delivered huge value to the TAS ecosystem because artists bring creative thinking to TAS that drives emerging technologies in innovative directions. Public artworks give audiences first-hand experiences of emerging technologies, provoking deep reflections on matters of trust, autonomy, responsibility and inclusion. Creative industries are an important socioeconomic sector of the UK that need to be addressed on their own terms through artistic methods.”
TAS has engaged artists through innovative residencies and projects. The programme has delivered a series of residencies, where artists participated in ongoing TAS projects, with new public artworks on AI-related topics, from engaging disabled dancers with robots to exploring bodily interaction and inclusion, to designing telepresence robots for museums.
Examples include:
Cat Royale
We initiated cultural ambassadors, Blast Theory, to deliver a landmark artwork called Cat Royale in which a small family of three cats, Ghostbuster, Clover, and Pumpkin, inhabited an AI-driven ‘cat utopia,’ at the centre of which a robot arm tried to enrich their lives by playing with them.
The Cat Royale video installation has engaged thousands of people and won multiple awards. The project also delivered research papers on designing robot worlds, embracing play with robots, and the ethics of multispecies research projects. Click on the image to watch an extract of Cat Royale.
Jess+
A photo of the Jess+ opening performance at the TAS Showcase
Craig Vear, Professor of Music and Computer Science at the University of Nottingham said:
“Jess+ an intelligent digital score system for shared creativity with a mixed ensemble of non-disabled and disabled musicians. The overarching aim is that the digital score enables disabled musicians to thrive in a live music conversation with other musicians, regardless of the potential barriers of disability. Our findings showed that the implemented user-centred design decisions and trustworthy AI approach led to rich experiences for the musicians which in turn transformed their practice as an inclusive ensemble.
“TAS support amplified the potential of this research project through funding enabling the support of two additional members of the team. They enhanced the development of the project and the significance of the data we collected. Without this support we would not have had such an impact on the musicians involved nor the depth of insights generated by the research process.”
Exploring the experience of dancing with machines
We all have bodies and when we interact with robots we may become even more aware of our body. This awareness can mean we become more attuned to the physical contact we have with the robot, which can mean we notice the sensation of skin on metal or other hard material. Read more about this project.
TAS also developed an innovative ‘Artists in Residence’ Programme
TAS has engaged artists through innovative artists residencies. The programme has delivered a series of residencies, where artists participated in ongoing TAS projects, with new public artworks on AI-related topics, from engaging disabled dancers with robots to exploring bodily interaction and inclusion, to designing telepresence robots for museums.
Delving into the aesthetic interactions with an autonomous system to help narrow the gap between robotics and interactive arts for children (their work is pictured right).
Creating ‘Autocar’ a speculative design which can be used as a way of exploring people’s attitudes to and implications of future technologies to investigate how trust works with autonomous vehicles.
Exploring disrupting ideas of trust in our mirrored reflections with the potential to develop meditative and playful apps that could be embedded in a diagnostic mirror that sits in people’s homes.
TAS also helped to organise an event called “AI, Music and the Human Spirit” at the Royal Society in London to support collaboration between leading members of the music industry and academics working in this field. You can watch a film about this below.
