After the Machine: How to Imagine in the Age of AI

As generative AI reshapes the cultural landscape, artists are confronting new questions around authorship, originality, labour, and refusal. In a world flooded with synthetic imagery, automated aesthetics, and algorithmically generated content, what does it mean to create something truly human, and which of us actually care?

This panel brings together artists and thinkers to discuss the emotional, ethical, and political implications of AI-generated culture. Beyond questions of efficiency or innovation, the conversation asks deeper questions about meaning itself: What happens when imitation becomes infinite? Does authorship still matter? Can cultural labour survive in an economy increasingly driven by automation? And what is about to be lost as we enter this new age?

Part critique, part provocation, this panel explores the growing desire for human made work in an era increasingly shaped by artificial production and asks whether refusal itself may become a creative act.

SPEAKERS

CADENCE WEAPON (Rapper, Author)

PSEUDO ANTIGONE (Philosopher, Musician)

JAE STERLING (Illustrator, Painter, Art Director)

DR. KELLY SUNDBERG (Criminologist, Professor, MRU)

JARETT SITTER (Writer, Illustrator)

MODERATOR

CONTRA (BUMP, Foreignerz)

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BUMP Festival returns August 3–17, 2026, transforming Calgary through murals, sculpture, music, placemaking, and artistic dialogue. Running August 13–15, the BUMP Urban Art Conference is the festival's ideas hub—a three-day gathering of artists, thinkers, musicians, and cultural leaders exploring the forces shaping public art and the cities we share. Learn more at yycbump.ca and follow @yycbump on Instagram.