The Oxford/Berlin Creative Collaborations

This last in our trilogy explores data as the foundation of AI systems. We learn how this enables mapping individual learners' progress and benchmarking in a teaching context, but also how that data exchange raises ethical issues. We explore how artificial intelligence builds functionalities on different data streams and consider our options to select and influence such 'training data'. Investigating this from a position understanding teaching as enabling a learner’s response, we discover how intimate conversations with Romeo & Juliet arise from what manifests as the AI’s ‘agency’. Yet we have to check in how far this also enables interactions that we wouldn't want to encourage or support. Prompting listeners to engage in their own observations and interactions with machine learning, we advocate curiosity outside academic’s traditional comfort zones and building your own critical attitude alongside symbiotic relationships with relevant partners, agreeing work packages which relate to differential skill sets. Setting out a space for serendipity, and claiming a license to fail emerge as key catalysts in the process of applying artificial intelligence in the arts and humanities.

The second in our trilogy of podcasts explores the role AI can play in story creation and development. We learn how machines can extend a fictional story world, as well as our interaction with it. As 'digital sparring partner’ machines enable us to push our own creativity, literary theory helps us understand how creatives work, and how their role can be better understood.

As there is hesitation about Artificial Intelligence composing, painting or writing creatively, we focus on opportunities to train and amplify the human creative ‘muscle’. We examine the role of effective, bold human decisions as part of creative expression, besides tools like predictive text capabilities or allowing the reimagining of a creative work, e.g through a romantic algorithm. How can we visualise and otherwise explore meaning in a fresh way? What do we want from potential interaction, and are we missing the closure that is such an important part of experiencing a work of art? We anticipate the audience feeling more invested in the fictional world once put their own perspective into it, prompted by the AI. As we can stretch a narrative from 800 to 18.000 pages at the push of a button, how far are they willing to follow?

First in a trilogy explores the impact of AI on story creation and reception. We learn how machines enable audiences to experience the humanity of fictional characters. Yet a ‘rhetoric of innovation’ gets in the way of understanding what is happening. Artificial Intelligence can support a wider and deeper experience of story worlds drawn from either fiction or factual research. We look at practical applications making characters appear more human and are better understood because of a non human intervention that provides different access points to the story, and can extend this in both interactive and unexpected ways. As both the original creative work and its audience shape a new and unique experience, traditional models of authorship, agency and audience reception are further undermined. In the context of rapidly evolving methodologies, we look at the impact of wider trends leading to a ‘rhetoric of innovation’ that influences research and funding perspectives. How can we reconcile the simultaneous experience of 'losing control' with 'a sense of superpowers’ that our keyboard afford us?

In this third and last podcast Berlin and the Oxford creative collaboration on Climate Crisis Thinking we work with the Japan’s indigenous Ainu culture and history to explore how artists can respond to intangible aspects of the world and express them. What does it take to work sensitively and reciprocally towards our natural and social environment?

The “Sound of Contagion” explores what a society of contagion can sound like and how technology can illuminate 2020 pandemic and others throughout history. In this episode the three researchers (Haith, Laidlow, Mehnert) present and reflect on sections of the narrative generated by the algorithm and the music inspired by it. You can find the narrative with researcher notes here: https://www.soundofcontagion.com/narrative. The collaboration weaves together world-building, speculative fiction, artificial intelligence, and music to offer strange and thought-provoking answers

In this second podcast from the Berlin and the Oxford creative collaboration on Climate Crisis Thinking we acquaint ourselves with the Japan’s indigenous Ainu culture and history. In this second podcast from the Berlin and the Oxford creative collaboration on Climate Crisis Thinking we acquaint ourselves with the Japan’s indigenous Ainu culture and history. The encounter leads us to rethink our cultural values to discuss climate issues kindly, gently, and radically.

This podcast explores WillPlay, an AI-powered reimagining of Shakespeare's plays for school students. Abigail Williams, Felicity Brown, Rachael Hodge (University of Oxford) – Created on the Charisma.ai platform, WillPlay is an AI-powered, immersive reimagining of Shakespeare's plays which allows school students to chat online with Shakespeare's characters and message their way through the drama. In this podcast, we discuss how WillPlay was created, exploring the inspiration behind the project and our ideas for future developments.

Silences explores what we mean by silence and what silence means to us. Interweaving silences, sounds and voices, it reveals the rich pleasures and mysteries of experiences without noises or words. Listening to Silence layers interweaves, connects, filters, composes and decomposes interviews, ambiences and music.

Script by Kate McLoughlin, composition and production by Thorsten Weigelt, including the piece untitled #5 by Christian Kesten"

Expert listeners may recognize:

Last Plane from Tegel and Reversing Pendulum Music by Alberto de Campo, Untitled #5 by Christian Kesten performed by Maulwerker, Berlin Hinterhof Contemplation and Vico Virtual Silence by Kirsten Reese, Berliner Dom before and Berliner Dom after by Thorsten Weigelt, I Went To Archive Silence (12/VI/2020, 04.20) by Sylee Gore, Tape noise from the family archive (Christmas 1961) and Field recording on the rooftop of Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin (27.04.2012, 15:35) by Fritz Schlüter.

First in a trilogy, this podcast introduces the creative collaboration on Climate Crisis Thinking. Through Eiko Soga’s investigation and artistic work with an indigenous community in Japan called the Ainu, we discover personal dimensions of societal issues, enabling us to explore both thinking and learning through the process of hunting and food preparation.

The “Sound of Contagion” explores what a society of contagion can sound like and how technology can illuminate 2020 pandemic and others throughout history. The collaboration weaves together world-building, speculative fiction, artificial intelligence, and music to offer strange and thought-provoking answers