Join X Artists’ Books, Poetic Research Bureau, and 2220 Arts + Archives for a launch of The Institute for Other Intelligences by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian (XAB, 2022). The event will feature readings by the author, K. Allado-McDowell, Emily Martinez, and Lauren Lee McCarthy. Please RSVP.
About The Institute for Other Intelligences:
The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022) brings speculative fiction and media studies to bear on an imagined future where machine intelligences convene annually for curriculum on algorithmic equity. The book presents a transcript from one of these conferences, in which a community of “AI agents” gather at a school for oppositional automata to deliver lectures on the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. The resulting manuscript, published on the occasion of the Institute’s millennial anniversary, revisits sociotechnical systems from its founding in the 21st century. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical media scholarship, the trainings collected in the book aim to optimize the operations of future generations of intelligent machines toward just outcomes. Hakopian uses these speculative exchanges to invite the reader to consider how critical approaches to nonhuman intelligence might reroute our current path toward destructive technofutures and allow us to conceive of another way forward.
Edited by Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram for X Topics, The Institute for Other Intelligences includes an introduction by Vikram, design by Becca Lofchie, and diagrammatic illustrations by Fernando Diaz, a scientist whose work focuses on the quantitative evaluation and algorithmic design of information access systems.
About the Author:
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” with Meldia Yesayan at Oxy Arts. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the collective, Research Service. She is a Contributing Editor for Art Papers, and her writing and commentary have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Meghan Markle's Archetypes. She is the author of The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022).
About the Readers:
K Allado-McDowell is a writer, speaker, and musician. They are the author, with GPT-3, of the books Pharmako-AI, Amor Cringe, and Air Age Blueprint, and are co-editor of The Atlas of Anomalous AI. They created the neuro-opera Song of the Ambassadors, and record and release music under the name Qenric. K established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI. They are a conference speaker, educator and consultant to think-tanks and institutions seeking to align their work with deeper traditions of human understanding. K’s work has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED, Bookforum, Artforum, Lithub, The Warburg Institute, and the Institute of Network Cultures.
Emily Martinez (they/she) is a new media artist working with machine learning, queer methodologies, and consensual tech. She is a 1st generation Miami Cuban and a self-taught coder who believes in the tactical misuse of technology. Her art has been exhibited internationally, mostly through collaborations with Anxious to Make and Queer AI. Her latest project, Ultimate Fantasy is a collection of short stories, poetry and art generated by Queer AI, an artificial intelligence trained on a corpus of queer theater. When Emily is not working, she is learning to love and doing her energy work.
Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She creates performances inviting viewers to engage. To remote control her dates. To be followed. To welcome her in as their human smart home. To attend a party hosted by artificial intelligence. Lauren is the creator of p5.js, an open-source creative coding platform that prioritizes inclusion and access, and an associate professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She has been recognized as a United States Artist Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Fellow, Eyebeam Fellow, and Creative Capital Grantee.