The New Real - Trust And Acceptance In Networked, Online Experiences To Enable And Support Post-COVID19 Recovery

Lead Research Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Edinburgh College of Art

Abstract

The vast majority of cultural organisations face significant barriers in transitioning towards networked, online cultural and business models. We call this the 'New Real.'

New literacies and skills are needed to develop and delight online audiences while negotiating the profound, complex challenges surrounding safety, privacy, transparency, and misinformation in networked environments. Being able to critically reason about the function of a system makes us more resilient in the face of future system failures, or can help us to make judgements about whether systems are safe and ethical. Our project responds directly to this need.

Qualitative research through participatory design and ethnographic methodology will investigate the potential for strategies from data arts to be tailored and situated for organisations newly producing online experiences. It will specifically address the design of online and hybrid experiences to both delight audiences and develop critical literacies around the underlying tensions and moral dilemmas in the New Real.

Aim: to better understand how to facilitate and accelerate the transition to resilience through new cultural, social and economic models for the UK's world leading cultural sector.

This is supported by three concrete Objectives (O), each corresponding to a work-package (WP) and research question (RQ):
O1: Understand the strategies used by data arts practitioners and organisations to delight audiences and build critical literacies in the New Real.
O2: Co-design pathways with cultural organisations towards new forms of pandemic-resilient online and hybrid experiences.
O3: Synthesise a set of actionable insights, tools, concepts and models that can enable and support post-COVID19 recovery.
 
Title AWEN - A Walk With Nature 
Description AWEN is a self-guided walk developing a deeply personal encounter with the environment beyond human scale. Interactive art, sound, movement and play are prompted by global climate data and science. You will be able to start your walk from anywhere in the world. As you move through your surroundings, you will receive poetic and playful prompts to your smartphone. Developed as part of Resilience in the New Real and Experience in the New Real, developed through co-creation with Edinburgh Science Festival and a group of artists, scientists and technologists. It was presented at the Edinburgh Science Festival 2021 and during COP26 The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact Part of a co-creation collaboration that piloted for Edinburgh Science Festival a new mobile event format for audiences during the pandemic, and tested a novel value proposition where the festival provides a platform for climate engagement. 
URL https://awen.earth/
 
Title Asking the Wrong Questions about Generative AI 
Description Sarah Ciston considers how creators interested in using generative tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney should account for the hundreds of thousands of unwitting co-authors whose content was scraped online for their proprietary models. Ciston presents alternative techniques that can make space for new aesthetics and ethics to emerge through community-centred approaches to machine learning: namely, conscientious dataset stewardship, small dataset curation, data sovereignty, and reimagining machine learning models from scratch. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact Impact reporting is underway and notable impacts will be updated soon. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/asking-the-wrong-questions-about-generative-ai
 
Title Circular Diffusion 
Description One of five artistic experiments commission by The New Real as part of the development of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. In this new work Adam Harvey reflects on the perils and possibilities of generative AI technologies and their unavoidable relationship to energy and propaganda. The collection of images, titled "Circular Diffusion", references newly developed AI diffusion algorithms, their power to automate the production of awe-inspiring imagery, and the circular logic of extrapolation. AI is often considered a hopeful technology with unlimited problem solving capabilities. But new solutions create new problems. When GANs and Generative AI are applied to climate change they produce non-scientific output cloaked in scientific language. Further, using generative AI to address climate change can multiply the existing problem: mitigating climate change means reducing energy, but developing AI requires vast amounts of it. The images in Circular Diffusion refer back to the energy waste of their generative production by using this very system to "diffuse" and propagate an ascendant and sustainable version of itself by cloaking the context in the latent space of classical art and greenwashing stock imagery. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This work feeds into the development of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/circular-diffusion
 
Title Cones of Uncertainty 
Description Alice Bucknell explores novel metaphors for grappling with the forces of artificial superintelligence. She draws on recent advances in climate modelling and machine learning to help us to think of both AI and extreme weather events as entangled, multiscalar issues. Bucknell reports on her creative experiments with The New Real's platform and presents a new video work drawn from her research. Using an expanded AI toolkit including Word2Vec, Copernicus climate projections, GPT-3, and a custom Stable Diffusion model, Bucknell's work expands on our capacity to grapple with both the unfolding climate crisis and our relationship to nonhuman intelligence. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact Impact reporting is underway and notable impacts will be updated soon. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/cones-of-uncertainty
 
Title Fold Me, Bend Me, Break Me, Said the Computer 
Description Linnea Langfjord Kristensen and Kevin Walker explore how an audience can become enfolded through immersion and interaction, and conversely how the 'black box' of AI can be unfolded by going inside it. In a folded world of multiple intelligences and pervasive but invisible structures, how much agency do we really have, and what can we do about it? Kristensen and Walker use artistic practice as a means of unfolding complex concepts and systems in AI. They show how an audience can become enfolded through immersion and interaction, and conversely how the 'black box' of AI can be unfolded by going inside it. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact Impact reporting is underway and notable impacts will be updated soon. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/fold-me-bend-me-break-me-said-the-computer
 
Title How to find the Soul of a Sailor 
Description Kasia Molga spent her childhood travelling with her sailor father on merchant navy vessels. He passed away quite unexpectedly 15 years ago leaving diaries from his journeys. In this talk Molga reports on experiments using The New Real's AI platform to recreate stories in his voice. She reflects on the ethics of 'recreating' fragments of her dad's personality to create an illusion of his presence - sensing lost loved ones in small datasets. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact This work is still ongoing with further impact reporting to come. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/how-to-find-the-soul-of-a-sailor
 
Title Mechanized Cacophonies by Anna Ridler and Caroline Sinders 
Description In Mechanized Cacophonies, Ridler and Sinders present an immersive artwork inspired by their time during lockdown, which explores how interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. The audience see and hear waves crashing on a beach - a 'natural' environment generated by AI. The joy of the work comes in immersing oneself within it at home, and taking an active role in bringing it to life across multiple digital devices. During lockdown many of us have craved nature and the outdoors. Sinders and Ridler had to isolate just two days into a residency at Edinburgh Futures Institute. In the process they found new, distributed ways of working - and in Mechanized Cacophonies have crafted an experience of nature that is both nourishing and otherworldly. The two artists, working remotely, each captured sounds and images from a variety of sources. They trained a computerised neural network to interpret the resulting dataset and then generate eerie and uncanny representations of nature. Developed as part of Resilience in the New Real, and premiered at The New Real artistic exhibition at the Edinburgh International Festival. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact One of two artworks in the New Real artistic exhibition that piloted for Edinburgh International Festival a new online format for audiences during the pandemic. 
URL https://www.eif.co.uk/archive/2021-mechanized-cacophonies
 
Title Photographic Cues 
Description One of five artistic experiments forming part of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. Photographic Cues explores the future of the photographic image in an algorithmic age, and brings to view a speculative future in which features of the natural landscape such as the body of water in a Scottish loch are the only remaining form of analogue lens. Tuning into the operation of the neural network, MacNeill explores new ways to survey and see the land at a time of climate emergency, and looks at how the boundaries between human perception, analogue lens and algorithmic image blur. The work presented brings to view a fictional future, in which a Scottish loch becomes a site to experience the slow gift of an image surfacing from the water in a digital and sculptural interface. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This work feeds into the development of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/photographic-cues
 
Title The New Real Observatory: Exhibition @ ARS Electronica 
Description An "experiential AI" system and artworks that equip future generations to flourish on a thriving planet in the midst of surprising, joyful, and inclusive forms of intelligent life. Exploring transformative ideas through art and AI to equip future generations to flourish on a thriving planet in the midst of surprising, joyful, and inclusive forms of intelligent life. The New Real Observatory is a complete "experiential AI" system developed with and for artists and scientists. Artworks by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Keziah MacNeill present multi-sensory exploration of possible futures and investigate the entanglements of people, data, machines, and environments. Post-Covid we are all digital natives, and we see today a transformative shift arising from an emerging generation of AI technologies that directly engage humans. Recent advances in machine learning based on learning patterns in huge volumes of historic data offer profound new capabilities, although being energy intensive, inscrutable, and can amplify inequality and injustice. The New Real has set out to understand how AI can augment and be enriched by the arts, and how far data science and the arts can help to answer each other's questions. The research has investigated next-generation intelligent experiences, low-energy approaches, and creative methods for explainable AI. The artists here specifically explore the construction and artificiality of localized representations of nature generated by AI; the agency and control inherent in certain ways of creating and encoding data; and the speculative point at which the boundaries between humans, machines, and nature blur. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact The exhibition invited a wide audience of professional practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and the general public to discover potential futures through artwork informed by climate data. This encouraged open discussion on the impact of technology in the arts and on its application of ecological understanding and prediction. 
URL https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/new-real-observatory/
 
Title The New Real online exhibition at Edinburgh International Festival 
Description The New Real was the title of an artistic exhibition curated by PI Hemment that was the first online AI art event of the Edinburgh International Festival. Two artworks were commissioned and presented: Mechanized Cacophonies by Anna Ridler and Caroline Sinders, and The Zizi Show by Jake Elwes. Each presents an astonishing artistic encounter for audiences during lockdown, and also asks deep questions about our relationship with technology. In Mechanized Cacophonies, Ridler and Sinders present an immersive artwork inspired by their time during lockdown, which explores how interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. The Zizi Show, made by Jake Elwes in collaboration with a community of drag artists, is a joyful and vivacious online cabaret that pushes the limits of what can be imagined on a digital stage. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact The New Real artistic exhibition piloted for Edinburgh International Festival a new online format for audiences during the pandemic. 
URL https://www.eif.co.uk/news-and-blogs/new-real
 
Title The Overlay 
Description One of five artistic experiments forming part of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. The Overlay explores the construction and artificiality of localised representations of nature. The work references Disney's "go away green": a colour engineered to hide unsightly yet necessary objects in theme parks. Cámara Leret has collaborated with an AI processing engine fine-tuned on images of greenery and built environments to reveal hues of green for local neighbourhoods. The multi-component artwork features a digital interface that allows anyone to find their localised green for anywhere on Earth, recoloured objects from a traditional fairground ride, and a multi-channel film in which a local hue is fabricated by Spain's last living colourist and assimilated by the local community in its material form. The artist uses The New Real Observatory platform to generate the colour through the interplay of the location, a future value for the vegetation index and an image dataset. She is interested in how the data stream of vegetation decide the deviation from 'abstract' hue. A colour is calculated by an AI that has been trained to identify the hue that lies in-between greenery and built environments. The work follows attempts at making this hue tangible locally and the entanglements that arise in doing so. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This works feeds into the development of the The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/the-overlay
 
Title The Overlay Exhibition @ Edinburgh Science Festival 2022 
Description We are excited to bring the first of five artistic responses within The New Real Observatory to the Edinburgh Science Festival this year. The Overlay by artist Inés Cámara Leret is an exploration into the entanglements that arise when attempting to make global climate data tangible. The film reflects critically and playfully on the gaps that arise when reconciling these global narratives with local environments. The exhibition explores the impact of technology in both enabling and hindering our understanding of, and relationship with, the current ecological crisis. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact The exhibition brought together a wide range of attendees from professional practitioners, researchers, to the general public. The exhibition encouraged open discussion on ecological changes through a technological lens. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/the-new-real-observatory-overlay
 
Title The Thames Path 2040 
Description One of five artistic experiments forming part of The New Real Observatory platform - a creative AI platform combining raw satellite data and climate modelling with AI processing engines. Lex Fefegha presents an AI research project that visualises what Londoners might lose and what will remain in a future where heavy rainfall will lead to flooding on the Thames Path in 2040. London like other large cities is not prepared for the impact of climate change, large parts of London were built on a flood plain. According to the UK's government environment authority, around 5.2 million properties in England are at risk from flooding with that number to double over the next 50 years. According to the Greater London Authority, 17% of London is facing either high or medium risk of flooding, with more than 1 million Londoners live in a flood plain. The artist wants to shed light on this area of concern; by utilising artificial intelligence to assist in visualising possible scenarios of how increased rainfall due to increased temperatures can negatively affect communities. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact Lex's work contributes to discussion on climate change and the direct impact it could have on London. The work encourages responsible AI usage and directly feeds into research for the advancement of The New Real Platform. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/the-thames-path-2040
 
Title The Zizi Show by Jake Elwes 
Description The Zizi Show, made by Jake Elwes in collaboration with a community of drag artists, is a joyful and vivacious online cabaret that pushes the limits of what can be imagined on a digital stage. It is hosted by Zizi, a drag act constructed using so-called 'deep-fake' technology that is capable of learning a variety of dance styles, looks and mannerisms by observing human performers. The making of The Zizi Show has enabled the drag community - which during lockdown has lost access to safe spaces for creative expression - to come together in a variety of 'spaces', from a cabaret theatre to a secure server. For the artists and production team it has also been a learning curve on IP and music 'sync rights' in the digital space. Developed as part of Resilience in the New Real, and premiered at The New Real artistic exhibition at the Edinburgh International Festival. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact One of two artworks in the New Real artistic exhibition that piloted for Edinburgh International Festival a new online format for audiences during the pandemic. 
URL https://www.eif.co.uk/archive/2021-zizi-show
 
Title Uncanny Machines 
Description A film on artists who envision new horizons for human-machine creativity, help us navigate the profound challenges of our times, and explore their own creative agency when developing or using AI. Discover the ways artists can push creative boundaries with AI, and how AI can be enriched or challenged by the Arts. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact In this film 7 artists contribute their use of AI which has lasting power as archival documentation for the current and future generations of AI artists, as well as, informs those with little knowledge of AI in the Arts about the possible applications and ethical standards of practice that can be achieved. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/uncanny-machines-development-awards
 
Title Voicing the Unspoken 
Description Johann Diedrick and Amina Abbas-Nazari give voice to unheard voices in archival datasets. They address the increasingly convoluted line between human and synthesised speech, and examine the origin of synthetic voices that are speaking to us today. Using The New Real's platform, they show how it is possible to use textual AI models to "fill in the gaps" of voices missing from historical data, produce speculative speech that never existed, and make those voices audible for contemporary ears. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact Impact reporting is underway and notable impacts will be updated soon. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/voicing-the-unspoken
 
Description The New Real foresaw and foreshadowed the generative AI turn which occurred towards the end of the project in 2022, and originated a transformative new research agenda for artistic research and practice in the age of intelligent machines. The research identified and characterised the 'new real' as the regime of digital transition constituted by both the digital pivot during Covid19 and the widening availability of powerful new AI tools. It found that this transition was prefigured by the niche of data arts understood as a site of radical innovations that can drive change. The project contributed new understanding on the strategies of data arts practitioners to produce and disseminate cultural works in digital environments shaped by AI data and algorithms, and the far-reaching changes at cultural, organisational, economic, and infrastructural levels following the generative turn.

That became the foundation for a transdisciplinary research agenda on the intersection of AI arts and engineering. The research revealed ways in which the strategies and works of the AI art community contribute to public literacies on the operations and consequences of emerging technologies. This led to the insight that these artistic strategies can furthermore address significant gaps in current work within the AI community on explainability and explainable AI (XAI). New research questions were developed concerning the wider implications of arts and creativity research for the AI field, and the potential for the arts to contribute new thinking on how the design of algorithms and to open possibilities for radically new concepts and paradigms on responsible AI. The result was the 'experiential AI' research theme which foregrounds human experience and context in the design, use, and evaluation of AI in cultural or other real-world settings.

The research was conducted using a co-creation approach called open prototyping which was found to effectively broker between disciplinary viewpoints and connect to communities in the real world through experiential prototypes. As a part of the research, a novel experiential AI system was co-designed and developed with and for artists and cultural organisations, and significant artworks were commissioned and presented on the stages of the world's most renowned arts festivals. Working closely with cultural sector stakeholders throughout the project, actionable insights, strategies and recommendations were developed and disseminated to support resilience, and technical and human infrastructure was developed providing a cultural interface to generative AI and a legacy to the project.

The project has given rise to a sustained and continuing national platform and framework for AI, Arts and Creativity research, named The New Real. It has shaped and led programme development and a new research network and partnership spanning the arts and sciences at The Alan Turing Institute, Creative Scotland, Scottish AI Alliance, Edinburgh's Festivals and other UK and international Universities and staholders. It resulted in a landmark UK-US initiative with partners including Carnegie Mellon and Rice Universities to explore the intersection of the arts and engineering with a focus on the ways in which the arts can enhance the data-centric engineering field.
Exploitation Route The outcomes of this funding are being taken forward and put to use by others through a range of national and international initiatives that leverage the convening power of The Alan Turing Institute to deliver the benefits of combining AI and the arts, with partner institutions across the devolved nations and internationally.

Professionals, practitioners and organisations in the cultural sector have developed experience and competencies in data arts and digital engagement, and are equipped with actionable insights, strategies and recommendations to navigate the era of generative AI.

The grant supported a range of amplification activities from national and international events to an innovative online magazine and roadmap to extend the benefits of the project across the cultural sector and adjacent fields. Those results continue to be built on through ongoing dissemination and engagement by and with national bodies such as Creative UK and regional bodies such as Creative Edinburgh.
Sectors Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Leisure Activities

including Sports

Recreation and Tourism

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections
URL http://www.newreal.cc
 
Description 1. THE RESEARCH EQUIPPED CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS TO BETTER NAVIGATE THE GENERATIVE AI TURN. The project enhanced the UK's global competitiveness in the cultural and technology sectors by increasing resilience in cultural organisations following Covid19 and enhancing the UK's position at the forefront of artistic research and innovation on generative AI. Festivals and cultural industries partners were able to better negotiate the path out of Covid19 by investigating near future scenarios for their organisations, adopting data-driven and online formats and services for audiences, and surfacing ethical and economically viable business models for digital experiences. The project increased professional and public understanding on the functions and functioning of intelligent systems, advanced understanding on applications of generative AI in the arts, and developed skills among cultural professionals to critically reason on the controversies and challenges associated with the wide-spread implementation of AI and data systems across the arts and society. Insights, strategies and recommendations as well as digital infrastructure developed through the research were adopted by cultural organisations to navigate the digital pivot during Covid19 and the subsequent explosion in generative AI. 2. A SIGNIFICANT NEW AREA FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION ON AI, ARTS AND CREATIVITY HAS BEEN OPENED UP The project established an expanded field for research and practice on AI, arts and creativity focused on brokering across disciplinary boundaries and in which the arts play a leading role in development and understanding of generative AI in other sectors. In particular, it demonstrated a vital role and contribution the arts can make to public AI literacies and to AI explainability. Consequently, The New Real was adopted as the arts and creativity theme of The Alan Turing Institute, and able to leverage the convening power of the Turing in expending the theme. The concept of creative methods for XAI that the project pioneered has spawned a new research community a the interface of AI and the Arts (XAIxArts) presenting international workshops at ACM Creativity & Cognition in 2023 and 2024 (Hemment is co-convenor). Overall, there is a more mature and advanced AI and Arts field benefitting from a distinctive blend of disciplines as a consequence of this award. 3. THE AI SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING COMMUNITY HAVE EMBRACED THE VITAL ROLE OF THE ARTS IN SHAPING AI AND THE UK IS SEEN AS LEADING INTERNATIONALLY IN THIS REGARD. The project demonstrated significant ways in which the arts can inform the development and understanding of AI in other sectors, and arts and humanities (A&H) approaches and methods have been adopted by the mainstream of the AI community globally as a result of this award. This has created new opportunities for the A&H to help answer science and engineering problems, and vice versa, and to foster radical new interdisciplinary concepts, strategies and methods. Examples of subsequent adoption and leadership in the wider AI community: i) The New Real itself has been the primary vehicle for undertaking and championing arts and creativity research at The Alan Turing Institute. ii) Experiential AI was adopted by the European Commission's AILab (Fraunhofer, CERN, ESA and Ars Electronica) as the inaugural theme of the ARTificial Intelligence Lab "Lighthouse" Artist Residency. iii) The PI has been appointed to develop and lead a new Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences theme in the flagship Data-Centric Engineering programme at the Turing. iv) The PI now leads a landmark UK-US initiative to explore the intersection of the arts and engineering with The Alan Turing Institute, Carnegie Mellon, and other high profile academic, governmental and industry stakeholders. 4. SIGNIFICANT ARTISTIC WORKS COMBINING AESTHETIC AND ETHICAL HAVE BEEN REALISED. Internationally acclaimed artworks have been commissioned, produced and presented as a part of the research, investigating artistic, technical and societal themes, and developing and demonstrating new formats and programme strands for the world's most renowned festivals. This includes The Zizi Show by Jake Elwes as a part of the eponymously named/self-titled The New Real programme at Edinburgh International Festival which piloted a new online data art format for the festival. The commissioned works have since toured internationally with Cypress Trees by Anna Ridler and Caroline Sinders exhibited by Ars Electronica. The Zizi Show was recognised by an Honorary Mention at the world's most prestigious digital art award, the Prix Ars Electronica, and has since been the subject of major solo shows at V&A London (UK), PHOTO International Festival of Photography (Australia), Art SG (Singapore), JUT Art Museum (Taiwan), Gazelli Art House (UK) and Pinakothek der Moderne (Germany). 5. INNOVATIVE RD&I MECHANISMS HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED AND ADOPTED THEREBY GENERATING CAPACITY AND SPILLOVERS ACROSS SECTORAL BOUNDARIES New capacity, skills, resources and formats for research, development and innovation have been developed and adopted. The New Real itself provides a novel vehicle for conducting cross-disciplinary research and innovation building on models of practice-based research in the arts. Specific contributions within the project include: i) An Experiential AI technology system and prototype. ii) Novel formats for ethical AI-fuelled cultural programmes including The Zizi Show and The New Real at Edinburgh International Festival. iii) The Open Prototyping co-creation tools and methods. iv) Knowledge exchange and public engagement instruments including The New Real Pavilion, The New Real Salon and The New Real Magazine. The cultural, technology and knowledge exchange instruments have been adopted in the UK and internationally by Edinburgh's Festivals, Creative Scotland, Scottish AI Alliance, The Alan Turing Institute and Ars Electronica. Open prototyping has been adopted as an innovation framework at Turing evidenced by the Turing Innovation Lab and the Data-Centric Engineering Workshop at AI UK 2024, the UK's national AI showcase. 6. THE CRITICAL AI ART COMMUNITY HAVE BEEN GIVEN A SPOTLIGHT AND A VOICE AND A MORE BALANCED NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DEBATE ON AI HAS BEEN ACHIEVED AS A RESULT. The New Real has provided a voice and platform for the critical AI arts community at a time of great upheaval. The project made significant contributions to debunking misrepresentations of AI and shifting perceptions away from the hype around generative AI to the deeper issues and consequences the art community so brilliantly articulate. The public debate on AI has been shaped through publications, events and numerous high profile press and media engagements. Project outputs have provided a platform to celebrate and amplify the key voice of artists on AI development and policy, and given the critical AI art community profile in the science and policy communities. 7. THE ACTIVITY HAS BEEN SUSTAINED AND EXTENDED BEYOND THE LIFE OF THE GRANT The New Real is established as a key reference point for the AI, Arts and Creativity field internationally and has been extended beyond the `life of the grant giving rise to a continuing programme (The New Real www.newreal.cc) and a new research network and partnership spanning the arts and sciences centred on those organisations and various UK and international Universities and cultural staholders. Follow-on funding includes EPSRC/Turing 2.0; Edinburgh City Deal Data Driven Innovation/EFI; Creative Scotland; Scottish AI Alliance.
First Year Of Impact 2021
Sector Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Environment,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural

Societal
 
Description Adoption of a mobile programme format and novel model of climate engagement by Edinburgh Science Festival
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or Improved professional practice
Impact The co-creation research led to the adoption of a mobile, climate data-based event format by the Festival, providing them with a pandemic resilient format during lockdown, and leading to a new value proposition.
URL https://youtu.be/5QFjxQHP9fw
 
Description Adoption of an online, AI-fuelled programme format by Edinburgh International Festival
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or Improved professional practice
Impact The co-creation research led to the adoption of an online AI-Fuelled event format by the Festival, providing them with a pandemic resilient format during lockdown, and leading to significant new works of art.
URL https://www.eif.co.uk/news-and-blogs/new-real
 
Description Adoption of new curatorial policy and programme format by Edinburgh International Festival
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or improved professional practice
Impact The co-creation research led to the adoption of an online AI-Fuelled event format by the Festival, providing them with a pandemic resilient format during lockdown, and leading to significant new works of art.
URL https://newreal.cc/magazine-database/video-ai-and-art-future-now
 
Description PI Hemment invited onto the Steering Group for Arts, Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the Alan Turing Institute
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
 
Description Policy advice and letter to Chancellor
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Implementation circular/rapid advice/letter to e.g. Ministry of Health
URL https://ddi.ac.uk/university-of-edinburgh-statement-in-support-of-the-pec-proposal-and-letter-to-gov...
 
Description The New Real and Experiential AI research partnership profiled in The Practice of Art and AI review report (Ars Electronica)
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Citation in systematic reviews
Impact The New Real and Experiential AI were scientific partners for the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab). It resulted in new cross-disciplinary practice through which the arts and sciences help to answer each other's questions.
URL https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/files/2021/08/artandai.pdf
 
Description Developing ML Optimisation and Enhancement of a Walking Experience
Amount £283,303 (GBP)
Funding ID Project Code: D-DS4S-028. Application Reference T1_28 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 08/2021 
End 05/2022
 
Description SFC-DDI Covid Beacon Programme: Smarter Places
Amount £98,780 (GBP)
Organisation Government of Scotland 
Department Scottish Funding Council
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2021 
End 09/2021
 
Description The New Real: Next Generation Intelligent Experiences
Amount £60,000 (GBP)
Organisation Creative Scotland 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2023 
End 03/2025
 
Title The New Real Magazine 
Description Communicating the insights from our research and the practitioners' views and experiences, The New Real Magazine Edition One synthesise a roadmap to the generative AI landscape, critically reflecting on the precedence of AI / New Media Arts in framing some of the most prescient contemporary challenges - a synthetic future foretold. Edition one of the magazine includes a guide with actionable recommendations for creatives working with generative AI, alongside more reflective articles, myth busters, artworks and reports. This is a novel way to offer interactive content for wide dissemination and use as a resource by researchers and practitioners alike. The content archive has been developed as an Open Journal, with support from the Edinburgh Diamond publishing team, ensuring perpetual upkeep of the content and data as well as opportunity for further innovation of the format by exploring open contributions calls, and subsequent curated Editions. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The articles in the Magazine Edition One have been widely quoted and used. Magazine Edition One has been deployed as a resource at the recent BRAID programme workshops with creative practitioners and cultural organisations (January 2024). 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/editionone
 
Title The New Real Pavilion and Research Hub 
Description The New Real presented a suite of activities as part of the 2022 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. As part of the co-creation with festival partners, the format was themed around the concept of Planet B: a different life is possible, but how? As the world's leading media art festival, Ars offers an ideal space to experiment with different modalities of engagement, with a specialist audience including cultural practitioners, artists, and technologists. The New Real pavilion was curated over a period of several months through co-creation meetings with festival partners; it hosted an exhibition of three artworks created with TNRO platform, a horizon scanning workshop, and research pavilion which highlighted The New Real research and its co-creation work with scientists and artists. Leading Scottish designer Andy McGregor designed The New Real pavilion to showcase TNRO Observatory. The pavilion hosted three artworks developed by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Kizziah McNeill, developed through the platform, as well as an interactive pop-up research hub and artwork evaluation booth. Exhibit The Overlay included physical objects that had been shipped to Austria and encapsulated in a divided partition to the exhibition. This was supplemented by a continual looped video accompanying the artwork and outlining the co-creation journey engaged to develop the platform, and a desktop interactive portion that invited visitors to explore the green in their own location. Photographic Cues had an additional tactile layer to the Ars exhibition space, with a controller submerged in water to explore the digital environment. The works were accompanied by a pop-up research hub that engaged audiences with research on future applications of AI in the creative sector as well as the broader societal questions and implications of the future of emerging technologies. Talks and tours by artists, curators and scientists opened a new layer of dialogue on the themes of the exhibition and artworks. Workshop In addition to our main exhibition we hosted a workshop 'Here be (Intelligent) Dragons: New Horizons for creative AI in the arts'. This workshop was developed by The New Real horizon scanning research team in tandem with representatives at Ars to discuss the theme of Next Generation Intelligent Experiences. The primary aim of this workshop was to explore how we create delightful, transformative artistic experiences that are: transparent, fair and sustainable; blending art and AI in a profound way; and co-created by humans and machines, rather than instrumentally employing AI and its hidden human labour? Research Hub Visitors were invited to The New Real Research Hub to engage with the team in conversation on how the latest developments in autonomous and intelligent systems can enable new forms of creative practice and fuel transformative experiences and services for audiences. The hub featured talks and tours by artists, curators and scientists involved in the development of The New Real Observatory platform, opening dialogue on the themes of the exhibition and artworks. Visitors were invited to share their impressions of the artworks, as well as write letters to the future as part of the horizon scanning research for future developments of creative machine learning tools and next generation intelligent experiences. The exhibition at Ars Electronica represented the cumulation of research and co-creation activities over 2022 as undertaken by The New Real. It built on previous event formats to encompass the wider research program and explore new forms of audience engagement and participation. This knowledge sharing space allowed for research data to be collected in multiple forms, from the video interview booth, in conversation with artists and research team, visual media forms, for audience members to share their thoughts on the artwork and on the future via letters that could be pinned to the research ribbon wall, or posted "to the future". This was enriched by a workshop that probed these themes more intensively, investigating emerging and future transformative applications of AI for artists, and for the creative sector as a whole. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Visitors to the exhibition at Ars Electronica 2022 in Linz, Austria, were given the opportunity to contribute to our horizon scanning and EAI research by choosing to respond to printed leaflet-based surveys dedicated to the two themes. After responding, they had the further option to either post their leaflet on a wall, which consisted part of the exhibition's installation suggesting the open-ended-ness of The New Real, or insert them to made-up post-boxes as part of a "letters to the future" framing. The leaflets contained sets of four interrelated questions allowing respondents to make connections between them, based on their experiences with our exhibition, but also of the Ars Electronica 2022 in general. The first leaflet was titled "Horizon Scanning: Next Generation Intelligent Experience - Be part of the research effort to envision new horizons for creative AI in the arts" and received a total of 27 responses. The second leaflet was titled "Experiential AI - Be a part of the research effort to envision a new paradigm for creative and responsible AI" and received a total of 33 responses. In addition to leaflets, visitors have been offered the opportunity to be interviewed for short periods of time (5-10 minutes) to expand more on topics of their interest and how these relate to the exhibition's topic. These participants filled in consent forms acknowledging the anonymisation of their data and willingness to participate. Upon analysis, Ars Electronica attendees have become increasingly aware of current critical perspectives concerning limitations of algorithmic recommendations, intense data labour, data ownership, and sustainability issues. Respondents expressed critical concerns about both machines but also their users. A specific respondent requested an AI application which would make humans stop asking "stupid questions" - in other words, contextual reasoning, being one of AI's holy grails, is not only an issue for AI research, but a pressing concern for human societies' difficulty in perceiving wider social contexts. Participants also showed increased awareness of AI's high environmental cost, paired with visions about sustainable solutions brought about by AI. Several participants emphasised the need to extend research on Next Generation Intelligent Experiences (NGIE) and related entertainment to heath and medicine awareness and research. Many participants acknowledged that breakthroughs do not seem realistic for future visions; instead they pointed towards adding features to existing applications (conversational AI, transport recommendations, clerical assistance) which should create affordable pathways to a number of social and psychological experiences which improve the quality of sustainable life. Participants imagined the convergence of digital, analogue, and hybrid technologies as tools to escape from digital technologies themselves. For some, artistic, user-based content curation would be a pathway towards such a solution. Some participants, possibly influenced by Ars Electronica's theme which emphasised on alternative modes of planetary interaction, expressed increased awareness of alternative modes of thought. One participant emphasised the need for NGIEs offering constantly changing stimulation to match observed increases in attention spans. The overall sentiment suggested the demand for new combinations of existing experiences in the spirit of GAN-like repurposing of existing data. Finally, participants often used our handouts to complain about the information flux within the festival; about the very impractical nature of several of the exhibits; the deeply disembodied and disengaged experience facilitated by many artworks. 
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/arselectronica2022
 
Title The Open Prototyping co-creation tools and methods 
Description Open Prototyping is a design approach and process to imagine, navigate and shape co-creation projects. It offers a way to bridge disciplinary viewpoints and connect to communities in the real world through experiential prototypes. It enables teams to design, structure and evaluate collaborative R&D, and address urgent challenges through participatory experiments with data and technology. You can use it to develop new products and services, reflect on their impact, and co-shape the future of technology and society. This design framework facilitates the scoping of future concepts, programme development proposals and interdisciplinary partnerships. Through a simplified six step pathway, Open Prototyping enables creative producers or cross-disciplinary teams to design, structure and evaluate co-creation processes. In the Scoping stage (1) of Open Prototyping, emerging social, technological, environmental and artistic challenges and opportunities are identified, mapped and framed as a concept scenario to help the team to begin to give shape to the project and set a strong foundation for collaboration. The Connect stage (2) invites you to map the relevant disciplinary expertise across artists, scientists, researchers, producers, stakeholders and community participants. The primary objectives in Connect are to identify promising collaborations and build consensus on project directions. The Play stage (3) involves creative and technical concept ideation and prototyping. The collaborators can explore new territories, untangle different perspectives, reframe the applications of emerging technologies, and play out future scenarios, until they arrive at the core value proposition. In the Produce stage (4), the value proposition and early design meets the real-world possibilities. Here we ask, how can we materialise this concept and exhibit it to the audiences? Alongside the build and contextualisation of the prototype and its setting, engagement tools and materials are designed and created that help explain to the users the value and function of the prototype. In the Display stage (5), the prototype is shared to communicate, share, showcase or test the novel concepts, ideas and technological solutions. It is a chance to test things out in real social contexts, and thereby explore and make visible their possibilities and limitations for future research and development in the field. In the Interpret stage (6) of Open Prototyping, data and observations gathered during the project and through the engagement of users are synthesised into a set of insights to drive future projects, technologies and practices. These insights can be widely disseminated to publics, practitioners and policy makers through relevant formats and channels to inform their work and knowledge on the themes. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The tool has facilitated the co-creation process of all creative projects within this project. The methodology has been presented at the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, Ars Electronica, TBA 21 Academy, and a number of dissemination events. It is now being widely adopted in innovation labs and programmes (e.g. at Alan Turing Institute), as well as in teaching (Building Near Futures, at Edinburgh Futures Institute). It also forms a core of our future research and development projects. 
URL https://openprototyping.org/
 
Description Ars Electronica presents The New Real pilot projects in 2021 
Organisation Ars Electronica Center
Country Austria 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution The research supported the Ars Electronica Festival to explore new horizons in AI art as a part of its strategy to emerge from the Covid-19 period, and developed novel artistic experiences that the Festival included as a part of its programme, including Cypress Trees by Anna Ridler and Caroline Sinders.
Collaborator Contribution The Director of European Cooperation, Organization and Finance as well as other team members participated in co-creation workshops, the Festival provided a platform to disseminate the pilot experiences. Ars Electronica participated in the research through the framework of the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, which is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.
Impact https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/cypress-trees/ Emerging from the Covid-19 Crisis into the New Real: Scenarios and challenge themes for the festivals sector Drew Hemment, Matjaz Vidmar, Caroline Sinders, Keili Koppel, Holly Warner www.newreal.cc/publications/emerging-into-the-new-real Multi-Disciplinary Visual Art Design AI
Start Year 2021
 
Description Cultural Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) 
Organisation Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution The research team collaborated with the Cultural Industries Policy and Evidence Centre to evaluate and make the case for Government investment in AI for the Creative Industries.
Collaborator Contribution The Cultural Industries Policy and Evidence Centre advised the research team to help them understand the sector needs from an economic perspective, and provided a route to policy impact.
Impact https://www.pec.ac.uk/news/calling-for-a-uk-centre-for-ai-and-the-creative-industries Multi-Disciplinary Creative Industries AI
Start Year 2021
 
Description Edinburgh Science Festival presents AWEN in 2021 
Organisation Edinburgh International Science Festival
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution The research supported the Edinburgh Science Festival through a co-creation process to develop and adopt a novel programming model and event format. The research team provided design, curatorial, climate science and AI research to facilitate the development of the programme.
Collaborator Contribution The Festival Director and the CEO each participated in a series of co-creation workshops, the Festival provided a platform to pilot the novel programme output, and participated in dissemination activities.
Impact https://newreal.cc/awen Emerging from the Covid-19 Crisis into the New Real: Scenarios and challenge themes for the festivals sector Drew Hemment, Matjaz Vidmar, Caroline Sinders, Keili Koppel, Holly Warner www.newreal.cc/publications/emerging-into-the-new-real Multi-Disciplinary Visual Art Design Climate Science
Start Year 2021
 
Description Partnership with Turing on The New Real and AI & Arts 
Organisation Alan Turing Institute
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution PI Drew Hemment and research team have developed The New Real into the flagship and exemplar AI & Arts activity for the Alan Turing Institute. Hemment is a leading member of the ATI AI & Arts group, and led a DE NetworkPlus bid on behalf of ATI, attracting 74 industrial letters of support and £3.1M committed match funding. Hemment has been voted on to the ATI Arts, Humanities & Cultural Heritage Steering Group.
Collaborator Contribution Turing CEO Adrian Smith briefed Government and UKRI on The New Real policy recommendations (https://ddi.ac.uk/university-of-edinburgh-statement-in-support-of-the-pec-proposal-and-letter-to-government). Turing staff have participated in consultations, workshops, meetings and development activity, including project design and co-creation with cultural partners, and funding proposal development. Turing member institutions (incl Queen Mary, Southampton, and others) have participated in workshops. Turing Fellows have contributed articles/blogs for newreal.cc. Turing has presented/showcased The New Real project participants and outputs at major fora and events.
Impact TNRO software & technical product Multi-disciplinary (Design Research, Visual Art, Science & Technology Studies, Data Science, AI Engineering). Experiential AI: Enhancing explainability in artificial intelligence through artistic practice. Drew Hemment, Dave Murray-Rust, Vaishak Belle, Ruth Aylett, Matjaz Vidmar, Frank Broz www.newreal.cc/publications/experiential-ai-enhancing-explainability-in-artificial-intelligence
Start Year 2021
 
Title The New Real Observatory Platform 2022 
Description The New Real Observatory platform is a tool designed with and for artists, to integrate data stream and forecasting pipelines for selected climate features, combined with AI processing engines to manipulate images, words, sounds and numbers using the climate data and forecasts as the exploratory parameters. This enables the artists to expose the operation of a machine learning algorithm, and explore the link between global-scale data and what we call "ground truth" or reality. The purpose of this project is to create an accessible, usable, low energy AI tool for artists who are not themselves AI practitioners. It also aims to test strategies to make AI legible and enable artists to connect global climate data to people's lives through narrative and interaction. Access The New Real Observatory platform: https://observatory.newreal.cc/ 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This creation of the platform was a part of a co-creation collaboration that piloted for Edinburgh Science Festival as a new mobile event format for audiences during the pandemic. It was tested as a novel value proposition where the festival provides a platform for climate engagement. It is continuing to be used by artists for aid in further development of the platform and to create climate data informed artwork. 
URL https://observatory.newreal.cc/
 
Description "AI in the Public Eye: Investigating Public AI Literacy Through AI Art" presentation at ACM FAcct 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Deputy Director of the New Real, Matjaz Vidmar presented on the accepted paper, "AI in the Public Eye: Investigating Public AI Literacy Through AI Art" at the ACM FAcct Conference in 2023. The conference was held online and in-person in Chicago, USA.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593013.3594052
 
Description "Towards a heuristic model for experiential AI: Analysing the Zizi show in the new real" presentation at the 2022 Design Research Society Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Deputy Director of the New Real, Matjaz Vidmar presented on the accepted paper, "Towards a heuristic model for experiential AI: Analysing the Zizi show in the new real" as a part of the Design Research Society conference in 2022. The paper was one of 317 papers accepted for publication and presentation out of 588 submissions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2022/researchpapers/311/
 
Description "We are in a revolutionary moment": Art is expanding in the AI era, says scholar 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact An interview with the artist and scholar Drew Hemment, who spoke at the Hankyoreh Human & Digital Forum.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/1097096
 
Description A bot walks into a bar Edinburgh fringe performers use AI to write jokes 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Director, Drew Hemment spoke with the Guardian and contributed to their article, "A bot walks into a bar Edinburgh fringe performers use AI to write jokes." The piece focused on the use of AI in comedy at the 2023 Fringe Festival in Edinburgh.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jul/30/a-bot-walks-into-a-bar-edinburgh-fringe-performers-u...
 
Description A.I. Brunch: Here Be (Intelligent) Dragons - New Horizons for Creative AI in the Arts @ ARS Electronica 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Here be (Intelligent) Dragons - A Sunday Brunch Session and horizon scanning for intelligent, immersive, fair, and environmentally sound experiences fit for the next generation of globally connected audiences.

The New Real brunch sessions invited attendees to explore the theme of Next Generation Intelligent Experiences through a combination of interactive activities to imagine, navigate and shape future landscapes for creative AI and the transformative shift arising from an emerging generation of AI technologies that directly engage audiences.

In attending this dynamic workshop audiences had the opportunity to collaborate with other expert practitioners on stimulating challenges and join a growing interdisciplinary network of engaged minds. The outcomes of this workshop directly informed a new research programme between The New Real and The Alan Turing Institute, and fed into a report.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/ai-brunch/
 
Description AWEN - Encountering Climate Emergency 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This event - part of 2021 Edinburgh Science Festival - explored how the AWEN art project was conceived and created as both a call to climate action and a mobile experience for an audience during lockdown, and how it piloted a business model wherein a cultural festival provides a platform for climate action. Featuring members of the New Real's creative team Inés Cámara Leret (Lead Artist), Brendan McCarthy (Interactive Digital Designer, Ray Interactive), Matjaz Vidmar (Experiential AI Researcher) and Daisy Narayanan (Senior Manager for Mobility & Placemaking at City of Edinburgh Council). Chaired by Amanda Tyndall, Festival and Creative Director for the Edinburgh Science Festival.
The webinar and art project enabled the Edinburgh Science Festival to engage an international audience during lockdown, and it demonstrated how a Festival can operate as a platform for climate action as a basis for a new business model for the Festival.
Webinar presented jointly by Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh International Science Festival (EISF). Live event and video posted online on newreal.cc online collaboration hub for public engagement and knowledge exchange.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/awen
 
Description Announcing The New Real Observatory & AWEN at COP26 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact At the time of COP26 we celebrated hundreds of transformative AWEN journeys with an evocative new documentary film. We were excited to announce the development of the 'The New Real Observatory', a step further in our aim to shape the future of climate data art. The platform allows artist to use data on climate change to create provocative and informative art to spark discussion with the general public.

Global leaders, activists and researchers had gathered for the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Scotland. Delayed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the event not only marked a 'no-turning-back' point to address the pressing climate emergency, but it also energised a new era of climate awareness and global behavioural change.

At The New Real, one of our core missions is to bridge the gap between global datasets and models about the environment and climate, and the local, everyday perspectives. It is sometimes hard to act when the problem is so much bigger than human scale and when the danger is not immediately apparent in our everyday lives. It is vital that we create a different relationship to the environment, and for this we need new connections, new experiences.

Hence, working with our leading academics and internationally renowned digital artists, we developed a stream of transformative projects with our festival partners.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/the-new-real-at-cop26
 
Description BBC Impostors - David Wilson's Crime Files Series 4 - Scams and Scandals (Deepfakes Episode) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Professor David Wilson investigates stories of impostors - the fraudsters and con artists who claim to be something they are not, sometimes getting away with it for years.

David explores a story that has a personal connection for him: the case of a fake crime writer. British man Paul Harrison published numerous true crime books and claimed to have first-hand experience of working with the FBI and of personally interviewing the likes of like Ted Bundy. He toured the country selling tickets for live events, where he would tell stories of his encounters with murderers. However, when journalist Robin Perrie went to one of these shows, he smelled a rat. Investigating further, Robin checked with the people Harrison claimed to know, including agents with the FBI, and all of them denied ever meeting him. Robin published his story in The Sun, and Harrison apologised to his fans before disappearing from view. Having actually met Harrison once at a book event, David feels close to the story. He meets Robin to discuss the case and to try to establish what motivated him to lie about his past.

The question of what motivates an impostor like Harrison is hard to answer. David consults with psychiatrist Dr Sohom Das, who has studied psychopathology, to discuss the mentality of the impostor in more depth. Is he a psychopath? Or simply an unscrupulous scam artist?

David also discusses online identity theft with tech expert Chitra Balakrishna. Our digital identities now define us in many ways, and they can be stolen, bought and sold on the dark web. How can we combat this and stay safe online?

There also is a new world of 'digital impostors' to worry about, known as deepfakes. David interviews Professor Drew Hemment, an expert in AI from Edinburgh University, to find out more about deepfakes and how they could be used for fraud, or even to corrupt the electoral process. To get right to the heart of how they work, David encounters a deepfake of himself made by Edinburgh University software engineer Evan Morgan. How convincing will it be? Could David himself be replaced one day by an AI rendition of himself?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gh5gqx
 
Description BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news interview on the main primetime news programme 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A prime time interview on the main BBC radio 4 lunchtime news programme
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description BBC Scotland Afternoon Show - Moral Maze: AI - the end of humanity or the next evolutionary step? 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact AI - the end of humanity or the next evolutionary step?

Computers are becoming more powerful. Much more powerful. Last week, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel Corporation died. A computer industry billionaire, he came up with 'Moore's Law' which observed that the power of computers doubles every couple of years. Today a microchip can contain 50 billion transistors, each narrower than a strand of human DNA.

The war of the robots has begun. Microsoft's 'ChatGPT' and its rival, Google's 'Bard' allow you to have a conversation with a computer, much as you would with another person. But it's not just talk. As well as writing essays, presentations, legal documents and sermons, artificial intelligence can also produce art. We've accepted that machines can beat us at chess, but might they soon also beat us at poetry, painting and music? Could they make Shakespeare look second rate? Or will art without human input always be worthless?

Some people are impressed by the quality of what AI can create, but others are scared. It's one thing for computers to process our knowledge, but quite another when a machine starts to teach itself. If it behaves just like a real person, will we trust it more than we should? Can machines display morality and if not, is it safe to allow them to make decisions for us? We worry that AI might take over our jobs, but should we really be worrying that it might replace humanity altogether?

Some see AI as the next evolutionary step, the latest development by mankind, with potential to transform lives for the better. But what are the risks in asking technology, however impressive, to solve human problems? Should we be excited by AI, or could artificial intelligence mark the start of the end of humanity?

Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Michael Buerk
Editor: Tim Pemberton
Expert Contributor: Drew Hemment
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kh4j
 
Description Designing The New Real 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The New Real invited professional practitioners, post graduates, and industry leaders to experience exciting and groundbreaking ideas for the arts and culture of tomorrow and help define the agenda for future research and teaching in this area. As part of this workshop we devised imaginative ways to research and experiment with new experiences, practices, infrastructures and business models, and to empower people to be agents of positive change.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/designing-the-new-real
 
Description Drew Hemment: Turing Spotlight 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Turing Fellow Drew Hemment is exploring how the arts can create interactive experiences that help to reframe problems in AI. His current work and career highlights are featured in this blog post by the Alan Turing Institute.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.turing.ac.uk/people/spotlights/drew-hemment
 
Description Edinburgh International Culture Summit 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact The New Real presented our research programme at the Edinburgh International Culture Summit 2022. The New Real team introduced policy makers and cultural professionals from participating nations to exciting new ways to combine art and technology in delightful and transformative digital cultural experiences for global audiences.

The event introduced delegates to the exciting latest developments that are pointing to a bright future for the cultural sector around the world. We presented methods and tools that can be adopted to drive collaboration between the arts and science sectors. Audiences discovered how art and new technologies - including Artificial Intelligence (AI) - combine to fuel new cultural experiences, reach wider audiences, sustain new practitioners, and heal the Planet.

We shared actionable insights on cultural development in The New Real, through policy recommendations and practical tools for the adoption of practices, technologies and infrastructures for a resilient and bright future for the arts and festivals. We also launched our Open Prototyping Toolkit - a six-stage process to support collaborative co-design and interdisciplinary R&D.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/culturesummit2022
 
Description Futurescot feature on AWEN at Edinburgh Science Festival 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A feature article on the novelty of AWEN: A Walk With Nature as a mobile experience that connects audiences to global climate data during the pandemic.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://futurescot.com/new-walkabout-app-brings-climate-crisis-closer-to-home/
 
Description How Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to change the world of art in profound ways 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Director, Drew Hemment and Deputy Director, Matjaz Vidmar contributed an article to the Scotsman's entitled, "How Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to change the world of art in profound ways."
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/how-artificial-intelligence-ai-is-going-to-change-the-worl...
 
Description How Edinburgh became world leader in artificial intelligence 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Director, Drew Hemment contributed to The Herald's article, "How Edinburgh became world leader in artificial intelligence."
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/23379083.edinburgh-became-world-leader-artificial-intelli...
 
Description Is artificial intelligence the future of the arts? 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact The New Real Director, Drew Hemment and Deputy Director, Matjaz Vidmar were interviewed by The Herald. The piece focused on AI's influence on the futures of the arts.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/23081392.artificial-intelligence-future-arts/
 
Description Resilience in the New Real: Co-Creation Development Workshop 1 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact To support the festivals recovery following Covid-19, we set out to understand the key challenges and opportunities for the culture and festival sector through two exploratory workshops with practitioners and stakeholders from different festival, media and policy organisations. External participants were invited to give 5 min presentations on the place for digital and AI-fuelled experiences in the transition to resilience and recovery after COVID19. There was then an interactive session when all participants populated the SCOPE Canvas, and then proposed and discussed scenarios based on triads of those statements. It closed with a session when stakeholders shared their plans for the coming festival cycle and discussed insights from the workshop. An audio recording was created of the workshop for later analysis, except for the final session to remove barriers to candid discussion. A Miro board was used to capture data on electronic post-its in the interactive session, and the project team recorded notes and annotations throughout. Through the workshops we built an understanding of festivals current format and visions for the future.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://twitter.com/experientialAI/status/1445809604022214658?s=20&t=YvV7R4UlbkiLKlZDPw9SXg
 
Description Resilience in the New Real: Co-Creation Development Workshop 2 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact To support the festivals recovery following Covid-19, we set out to understand the key challenges and opportunities for the culture and festival sector through two exploratory workshops with practitioners and stakeholders from different festival, media and policy organisations. External participants were invited to give 5 min presentations on the place for digital and AI-fuelled experiences in the transition to resilience and recovery after COVID19. There was then an interactive session when all participants populated the SCOPE Canvas, and then proposed and discussed scenarios based on triads of those statements. It closed with a session when stakeholders shared their plans for the coming festival cycle and discussed insights from the workshop. An audio recording was created of the workshop for later analysis, except for the final session to remove barriers to candid discussion. A Miro board was used to capture data on electronic post-its in the interactive session, and the project team recorded notes and annotations throughout. Through the workshops we built an understanding of festivals current format and visions for the future.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://twitter.com/experientialAI/status/1445809604022214658?s=20&t=YvV7R4UlbkiLKlZDPw9SXg
 
Description Rise of the Machines: Is AI going to take over the world or can it save the planet? 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Director, Drew Hemment contributed to the Scotman's article, "Rise of the Machines: Is AI going to take over the world or can it save the planet?" He emphasised the transformative potential of AI.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/rise-of-the-machines-is-ai-going-to-take-over-the-world-an...
 
Description Scotsman feature on The New Real at Edinburgh International Festival 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A feature article on the novelty of The New Real online AI art programme for the Edinburgh International Festival:
"The Edinburgh International Festival is to embrace artificial intelligence and deepfakes for the first time - with a virtual cabaret featuring digital drag queens."
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/edinburgh-international-festival-embraces-d...
 
Description Scottish AI Alliance Podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact In this episode of Turing's Triple Helix we delve into the work of The New Real a unique hub for AI, creativity and futures research.
We discuss the implications AI's place in the creative industry and the upcoming New Real Art Commission 2023, a partnership between the Scottish AI Alliance, The New Real, The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Edinburgh.

Guests:
Professor Drew Hemment, Director of The New Real
Dr Matjaz Vidmar, Deputy Director of The New Real
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.scottishai.com/news/new-podcast-the-new-real-ai-and-art
 
Description Scottish AI summit will tackle major questions around technology 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Professor Drew Hemment spoke about the importance of AI ahead of this week's Scottish AI Summit in Glasgow with The National news agency.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.thenational.scot/news/23412749.scottish-ai-summit-will-tackle-major-questions-around-tec...
 
Description Strategies of Culturing Panel @ Ars Electronica 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Culture can be viewed as an aggregate of stories that show a pattern, while featuring a wide range of complexity and movement. Cultural narratives can help contextualize and make sense of our own, individual stories while also shaping our habits and ethics.

As B. Fuller says - To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete - creative practitioners and cultural strategists hold the tools needed to adapt outdated cultural narratives. They can aid sustainable, long-term change by creating new cultural models. Narratives that are thus built around a core of intersectionality and equity and that further both climate and interspecies justice, have the potential to resonate with and empower the people of Planet B.

In this panel discussion, protagonists specializing in AI research, transdisciplinary and critical art, cultural economy, philanthropy and organizational development came together to debate strategic culturing and the tools for building cultural narratives that inspire and inform change.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/strategies-of-culturing/
 
Description Talk at CogX 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A talk by PI Drew Hemment on The New Real and the Experiential AI theme as a part of the Alan Turing Institute session at CogX 2021
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnFf3ltEHho&ab_channel=CogX
 
Description The New Real @ Scottish AI Summit 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact The New Real team attended the Scottish AI Summit and showcased projects developed over the last year, and presented a lunchtime demo of our new climate AI platform for artists.

We hosted a break out session and showcased film content of the fantastic projects we have produced over the last year with artists; Adam Harvey, Inés Cámara Leret, Keziah MacNeill, Alex Fefegha, and Jake Elwes. We also presented an exclusive demo of The New Real Observatory, a climate AI platform for artists and hosted a virtual stand. The audience was able play with the technology, see the mechanisms of the algorithm, speak to our data scientist, Daga Panas, and learn more about The New Real projects.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/the-new-real-scottish-ai-summit
 
Description The New Real Observatory @ AIUK 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact We were delighted to be part of AI UK 2022 where we launched our exciting new project partnered with The Turing Institute, The New Real Observatory. AI UK is the perfect forum to reveal what we have been working on in collaboration with artists and technologists as part of one of our core missions; to bridge the gap between global datasets and models about the climate, and the local, everyday perspectives.

We presented on the climate action stage with a mix of in person discussions, our brand new project film content and had open Q&A sessions with our artists and technologists; Drew Hemment, Matjaz Vidmar, Daga Panas, Inés Cámara Leret, Alex Fefegha, Eliza Easton, Vaishak Belle, and Adam Harvey.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/the-new-real-observatory-aiuk
 
Description The New Real Observatory: Exhibition @ ARS Electronica 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The New Real presented An "experiential AI" system and artworks that equip future generations to flourish on a thriving planet in the midst of surprising, joyful, and inclusive forms of intelligent life at Ars Electronica. Artworks by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Keziah MacNeill were presented in a multi-sensory exploration of possible futures and investigated the entanglements of people, data, machines, and environments. Post-Covid we are all digital natives, and we see today a transformative shift arising from an emerging generation of AI technologies that directly engage humans. Recent advances in machine learning based on learning patterns in huge volumes of historic data offer profound new capabilities, although being energy intensive, inscrutable, and can amplify inequality and injustice. The New Real has set out to understand how AI can augment and be enriched by the arts, and how far data science and the arts can help to answer each other's questions. The research has investigated next-generation intelligent experiences, low-energy approaches, and creative methods for explainable AI. The artists here specifically explored the construction and artificiality of localized representations of nature generated by AI; the agency and control inherent in certain ways of creating and encoding data; and the speculative point at which the boundaries between humans, machines, and nature blur.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/new-real-observatory/
 
Description The New Real Salon Showcase 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The New Real, a project out of the Edinburgh Future's Institute showcased of our work the weekend of October 28th - 30th.
The weekend showcase was an opportunity for participants to continue the exploration from our Friday Salon, and get hands-on with the artworks themselves. The New Real Showcase presented a suite of artworks and interactive exhibits from The New Real making the Artificial Intelligence systems more legible, transparent, fair, and environmentally sound through arts and design. This Showcase comprised The New Real Observatory Platform, co-created by a team of scientists, artists, engineers and designers; and new horizons for creative machine learning tools and next generation intelligent experiences.

The New Real Observatory platform is combining machine learning processing engines with localised global climate data models.
Powered by its conceptual architecture, three artworks have been developed by Inés Cámara Leret, Adam Harvey, and Kizziah McNeill, which investigate the entanglements of people, data, machines and environments. The works were accompanied by interactive exhibits which engaged audiences with research on future applications of AI in the creative sector as well as the border societal questions and implications of the future of emerging technologies.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/thenewreal-showcase
 
Description The New Real Salon: Exploring the future of AI and the arts 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The New Real asked audiences to experience our ground-breaking ideas around the arts and culture of tomorrow and how AI intersects with society to allow us to reflect back on ourselves in an in-person workshop held at The University of Edinburgh's Inspace Gallery. We also had a livestream of the event for those who could not make it in person or for those joining from outside of Edinburgh.

Responding to Edinburgh Future Institutes' First Breath programme theme, audiences discovered how Art and Artificial Intelligence combine to fuel delightful new cultural experiences and help heal our planet in crisis. This event was also presented as part of DataFest Fringe 2022.

Audiences held from leading international AI artists, Alex Fefegha and Gershon Dublon, designers and scientists on how art and creativity can help to radically change how we think about AI design, to embrace human traits such as bias, disagreement, and uncertainty as a signal with creative potential rather than noise that needs to be removed. Attendees gained insight into how our work is addressing the urgent need to tackle both energy intensive technologies and the disconnect between global climate information and people's daily lives.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/thenewreal-salon
 
Description The Overlay Drop In Sessions @ Edinburgh Science Festival 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The New Real team presented the audio visual screening of The Overlay, presented alongside an exhibition installation. Audiences were encouraged to meet and discuss with artist, Inés Cámara Leret, and to chat with the creators of The New Real Observatory Platform. Audiences learned more about the journey of the artist in creating this AI experience and the concept behind it.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://efi.ed.ac.uk/art-meets-ai-in-a-tangible-exploration-of-global-climate-data-in-edinburgh-scie...
 
Description The Overlay Exhibition @ Edinburgh Science Festival 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The New Real showcased 5 AI artists at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. The Overlay by artist Inés Cámara Leret was the first film exhibition and it was an exploration into the entanglements that arise when attempting to make global climate data tangible. The film reflects critically and playfully on the gaps that arise when reconciling these global narratives with local environments. The exhibition explored the impact of technology in both enabling and hindering our understanding of, and relationship with, the current ecological crisis and encouraged audience conversation around the issue.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://efi.ed.ac.uk/art-meets-ai-in-a-tangible-exploration-of-global-climate-data-in-edinburgh-scie...
 
Description The Overlay Preview @ Edinburgh Science Festival 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Artist, Inés Cámara Leret joined The New Real Director, Drew Hemment, and Deputy Director, Matjaz Vidmar for the opening preview of The Overlay, a co-created art piece with The New Real Observatory platform.This was a major showcase of the project, launching the very first prototype experience and concept by Cámara Leret alongside which we presented the creative AI platform, The New Real Observatory, developed with and for artists. Audiences had a chance to explore the artwork/film and meet the artist to learn more about her artistic journey in creating this AI prototype experience and the concept behind it.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.newreal.cc/events/the-new-real-observatory-overlay
 
Description The World's Smartest Artificial Intelligence Just Made Its First Magazine Cover 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Director Drew Hemment contributed to Cosmopolitan's "The World's Smartest Artificial Intelligence Just Made Its First Magazine Cover" magazine edition. It explored the technology behind DALL-E 2 and the future of arts with AI.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a40314356/dall-e-2-artificial-intelligence-cover/
 
Description Turing Researcher Spotlight n Drew Hemment 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Turing Spotlight articles "Highlight the brilliant minds working at the Turing"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.turing.ac.uk/people/spotlights/drew-hemment
 
Description Twitter account - @experientialAI 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact An active twitter account for knowledge exchange and public engagement
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://twitter.com/experientialai
 
Description Webinar: AI and Art, the Future is Now 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The event presented and discussed used the first online data art exhibition at EIF, with artists Anna Ridler and Caroline Sinders in conversation with Edinburgh International Festival (EIF)Head of Programmes Roy Luxford and PI Drew Hemment. Chaired by Briana Pegado. Why are artists working with AI? And how? This disseminated early findings concerning the design of digital experiences for digital audiences during the pandemic and sparked questions from the audience and discussion by the panel.
The Head of Programmes at Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) seriously investigating and advocating for the value and significance of a new area of transdisciplinary creative practice AI art for their programme.
Webinar presented jointly by Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh International Festival (EIF). Live event and video posted online on newreal.cc KE and PE collaboration hub.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/video-ai-and-art-future-now
 
Description Webinar: The Politics of AI and Drag 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact New Real artist Jake Elwes in conversation with drag artist Me, Morgan Currie and Drew Hemment. Chaired by Briana Pegado. Morgan Currie and Drew Hemment. Chaired by Chaired by Briana Pegado FRSA, Creative Director of Fringe of Colour Films. Through drag performance, this artwork aims to use cabaret and musical theatre to challenge narratives surrounding AI and society.
The webinar and art commission empowered a marginalised community - the drag and LBQT+ community - that was poorly represented in Machine Learning training data by developing access to AI and providing paid employment for the creative performance community during lockdown.
Webinar presented jointly by Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh International Festival (EIF). Live event and video posted online on newreal.cc online collaboration hub for public engagement and knowledge exchange.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.newreal.cc/posts/video-politics-ai-drag
 
Description Website featuring an online magazine and collaboration hub 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact An online hub for discussion, publications and astonishing cultural experiences fuelled by AI. An innovative knowledge exchange and public engagement instrument that is integral to the co-creation research method and routes to impact.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://www.newreal.cc