Are we ready? Artificial Intelligence will change the way we communicate, create and experience our world. Kulturtechniken 4.0 invites artists, thinkers and creative minds to participate in one of the most important discussions of our time.
Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly already influencing our traditional cultural techniques. But have we reached the point where the use of AI itself could be described as a cultural technique? One thing is certain: We have long utilised digital systems in our daily lives despite not having the slightest idea how they work.
Sybille Krämer
Karen Palmer is a self-dubbed storyteller from the future. The British artist combines film, AI, gaming, art and behavioural psychology to create immersive film experiences that change and evolve the story depending on the viewers’ emotional reactions.
Barbara Gruber
As more language preservation initiatives inspired by artificial intelligence emerge, researchers argue that while they cannot fully capture the essence of language, they are a crucial aspect of preserving what is now deemed to be a global linguistic catastrophe.
Bob Koigi
When Google Translate was first launched in 2006, it could only translate two languages. By 2016, it was supporting over 103 languages and translating over 100 billion words a day. Now, not only does it translate, but it can also transcribe eight of the most widely spoken languages in real time. Machines are learning, and they are learning fast.
Alana Cullen
Online technology powered by machine learning can spot our spelling mistakes, complete our sentences and even help us write in foreign languages. But are our writing skills getting worse at the same time? Best-selling author Thomas Ramge told Goethe-Institut there are pluses and minuses to this field of technological advancement.
Machine translation has improved considerably in recent years thanks to a new technology known as “NMT”. So, what does the future hold for this rapidly advancing field and what does it all mean for the human translators trying to keep up?
André Leslie
After just three albums, Holly Herndon has already established herself as one of the major names in the AI music scene. Despite creating sounds that seem anonymous and impersonal at times, Herndon says making AI-powered music is still a very human endeavour.
The possibility of machines composing original music has developed from a fringe idea into a mainstream topic. Headlines are full of technological promise as they herald the progress made in this area, but what does it mean for the musicians making new works and audiences looking for music that means something to them?
Jochen Gutsch
As AI scientists try to test the technology’s creative limits, the world of music is being issued with a challenge. Goetz Richter, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, gives his view on music, artificial intelligence and consciousness.
Goetz Richter
Seeing how simple my young children's art was, I wondered if I could teach their creative process to a painting robot. My attempts, failures and successes led to a 15-year journey of artistic discovery that gave me profound insights into my own mind, including how my creative process worked.
Pindar Van Arman
At the Los Angeles-based Refik Anadol Studio, artists, architects and data scientists collaborate with machine intelligence to rethink the layered meanings of consciousness and space. Pelin Kivrak, the concept developer at RAS, gives an insight into the Studio’s recent work.
Pelin Kivrak
Generally, the works of contemporary artists have been embodied ruminations on AI’s impact on existential questions of the self and our future interaction with nonhuman entities. Few, though, have taken the technologies and innovations of AI as the underlying materials of their work and sculpted them to their own vision.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Artificial intelligence has been depicted in film for decades. It embodies the tension in our societies between interest, enthusiasm, scepticism and anxiety about the technologies we have created and which surround us every day.
Claudia Sandberg
A Hollywood star’s run at the top of Tinseltown can be fleeting. But artificial intelligence is powering de-ageing technology and even generating lifelike digital humans that could change movie-making forever.
Peter Griffin
Algorithms are not strangers to the art of filmmaking. Most of the time they play a role imperceptible to the viewer, yet they are essential for telling stories and, even more, explore the fringes of film language.
Pablo Núñez Palma
AI stands for artificial intelligence, but as leading technologist Toby Walsh likes to point out the “A” could also be for augmenting. The Sydney-based academic spoke to the Goethe-Institut about how humans can combine forces with AI to create new solutions and art.
Artificial intelligence is one thing above all else: a lot of work. Designed to be a never-ending competition, it generates many losers and only a few winners. Instead of artificial intelligence, we should really be talking about “laborious intelligence.”
Sebastian Schmieg
From Berlin to Bangkok, robots in home, healthcare, school and work settings are becoming more common. However, research from across the globe suggests this technology is not one-size-fits-all for humanity.
Emily Cross