open-ended

In this conversation, Sougwen Chung (Scilicet Studio), Freya Murray (Google Arts & Culture), and Suhair Khan (open-ended design) talk about the confluence of machine learning and robotics with artistic practice.

Could we imagine an engineer as an artist, or an artist as an engineer? Can you make real innovations in designing with machine learning without access to research teams at major tech companies? Should algorithms be given names to remind ourselves that they are not “neutral”?

This conversation is part of open-ended design’s Technology & Design Lab in partnership with London Design Festival 2022. The mission is to connect visionary creatives and technologists, to catalyse, seed and build around new ideas. In this series, we are asking the question: “In an age of disruption and innovation: where do we go next?”

For future events, follow open-ended design on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter, or visit openended.design.

The Technology & Design Lab has been generously supported by Google, The House of KOKO, WeTransfer, Gaia Art Foundation, and Lito.io.

In this conversation, Tom Dixon OBE (Tom Dixon), Karen Kang (TikTok), and Amon Kale (Central Saint Martins, LVMH) consider the role of creatives across digital platforms. They discuss the ways in which creativity is being decentralised, the role of social media in increasing access, and what is meant by an “authentic” brand voice.

This conversation is part of open-ended design’s Technology & Design Lab in partnership with London Design Festival 2022. The mission is to connect visionary creatives and technologists, to catalyse, seed and build around new ideas. In this series, we are asking the question: “In an age of disruption and innovation: where do we go next?”

For future events, follow open-ended design on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter, or visit openended.design.

The Technology & Design Lab has been generously supported by Google, The House of KOKO, WeTransfer, Gaia Art Foundation, and Lito.io.

In this conversation, Sougwen Chung (Scilicet Studio), Freya Murray (Google Arts & Culture), and Suhair Khan (open-ended design) talk about the confluence of machine learning and robotics with artistic practice.

Could we imagine an engineer as an artist, or an artist as an engineer? Can you make real innovations in designing with machine learning without access to research teams at major tech companies? Should algorithms be given names to remind ourselves that they are not “neutral”?

This conversation is part of open-ended design’s Technology & Design Lab in partnership with London Design Festival 2022. The mission is to connect visionary creatives and technologists, to catalyse, seed and build around new ideas. In this series, we are asking the question: “In an age of disruption and innovation: where do we go next?”

For future events, follow open-ended design on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter, or visit openended.design.

The Technology & Design Lab has been generously supported by Google, The House of KOKO, WeTransfer, Gaia Art Foundation, and Lito.io.

We continue our planet focused season this week with curator Diana Campbell, who is committed to fostering a transnational art world. Championing socially engaged artistic practices of underrepresented artists and regions has earned her recognition on the annual ArtReviewPower100 list. 🏆

Since 2013, Diana has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit. It is the highest daily visited contemporary art exhibition in the world. She is also the Founding Artistic Director of BellasArtes Projects in the Philippines and curated Frieze Projects in London for 2018 and 2019. 

In this episode Diana speaks about how she ended up becoming one of the world’s leading contemporary art curators - from Dhaka to Frieze; and about culture in the time of a climate crisis. Stay tuned for her plans for Desert X in the Coachella Valley in 2023. 🌵🇧🇩🎨

This week’s open-ended conversation is with the versatile Shloka Nath, head of sustainability and policy at Tata Trusts in Mumbai. Shloka Nath is a thought leader focused on funding climate in India across business and society.At the center of her work as the co-founder and Acting CEO of the India Climate Collaborative, is the question of how climate can be funded in the broader ecosystem in India.In this episode, Shloka speaks about connecting with nature, the wildlife book that inspired her work on climate, and how art is a part of everything she does. 🌿🇮🇳🌦️We hope you enjoy this conversation 💥

This weeks conversation is with architect and teacher Hussam Dakkak. 

Hussam has been the founder and program director of the AA Jeddah Visiting School since 2015, which critically archives and studies Makkah, a city sacred to all Muslims and home to the holiest site in Islam, the Ka'aba. A historian and archivist, Hussam's work is political and sometimes subversive. 

He is a partner at Studio Bound, a design collaborative based between London and Saudi, and holds a masters in architecture from the Architectural Association in London. Most recently, Hussam curated the Saudi Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Hussam gives Open/Ended an inside view into his Makkah project, his process of archiving social histories through research and storytelling, and much more. 📜✨⚒️

We hope you enjoy this conversation 💥

This weeks conversation is with Katie Patrick, an environmental engineer and software designer based in San Francisco. Katie works at the intersection of environmental behaviour, gamification, and technology, tackling complex environmental issues by applying data-driven game and behaviour-change techniques.Passionate about the power of gaming to save the planet, Katie is an author and podcast host, How to Save the World: How to make changing the world the greatest game ever played.She has collaborated with UNEP, NASA JPL, Goggle, Magic Leap, IES, Institute for the future, and Stanford. Katie’s now founded multiple climate-focused platforms and startups: 

🏞️ Urban Canopy, a map-based application that uses satellite imaging of urban heat islands and vegetation cover to encourage urban greening and cooling initiatives  

⚡Energy Lollipop, a Chrome extension and outdoor screen project that shows the electric grid's CO2 emissions in real-time for California. These days Katie is busy building a “Fitbit for the Planet”, to show people real-time data from sensors and satellites to teach them their environmental footprint – CO2, water, waste, pollution – just as a Fitbit shows the number of steps taken. ⚡🛰️ 🎮We hope you enjoy this conversation 💥

We kick off the new year with a conversation with multimedia artist Shezad Dawood, who works across the disciplines of painting, film, sculpture, performance, virtual reality and digital media. 

His work asks key questions of narrative, history, and embodiment, fusing artistic narratives with the issues of our time, challenging us to think about the future in new ways.

Shezad has had an epic couple of years. Some of his recent projects include co-producing the ‘Concert From Bangladesh’, a mixed-reality music concert, and creating The Terrarium, a VR experience that presents a world 300 years from now, where the Earth’s surface is 90% water.

Particularly passionate about climate change, he shares his thoughts about environment, technology, and his work across the South Asian subcontinent. 🎶 🐠🌊

We hope you enjoy this conversation 💡

This week’s Open/Ended conversation features Whitney Richardson, a creative visual strategist who uses technology, events and journalism to connect people around the world.

Over the last few years, Whitney has produced live events for The New York Times across Europe to address the most pressing stories of our time: climate change, gender, tech, and culture.

Whitney speaks about her work on one of the most ambitious live events in The New York Times's 170-year history, a series of 70+ virtual events on climate for the NYT Climate Hub at COP26 in Glasgow. 🌎🌲🎥 

We hope you enjoy this conversation.💡

To kick off Season 3, we are excited to welcome Anab Jain - designer, futurist and filmmaker.

As co-founder of Superflux, Anab leads a seminal design practice that is responsive to the challenges and opportunities of this era.

Anab and her team imagine and build future worlds for the present moment. They confront issues such as climate change and inequality, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the future of work.

And they collaborate in surprising ways, they’re currently working on new narratives in Artificial Intelligence with organisations like Deepmind and Omidyar.

Anab is a dreamer, storyteller, and mythmaker, and her childhood in India has brought her on a remarkable journey.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.