The Elephant in the Room: Provocations on Artificial Intelligence

Join Der Greif, Foam Magazine, Photoworks and The Photographers Gallery for an afternoon of thought-provoking discussions exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on photography and visual culture. Through presentations, roundtables, and panels, we will tackle key topics including creative opportunities, authorship, bias, and the shift towards synthetic images. How do these changes reshape our view of photography, and what role does AI play as an agent or collaborator?

Select artists who have recently collaborated with our organisations to explore this subject will share how AI has influenced their photography and creative practices. Our guests include artists Marcel Top, Stéphane Degoutin and Gwenola Wagon, Ben Millar Cole, and Hiền Hoàng.

This engaging event will feature a series of talks from 4pm to 6.30pm, followed by a lively social gathering with drinks to celebrate the double launch of Der Greif Issue 17 and Photoworks’ Annual 31, Multi Multi. This will include a special poetry performance from Mitchell Robertson.

4pm-6.30pm - The Elephant in the Room: Provocations on Artificial Intelligence
7pm-10pm - Der Greif 17 + Photoworks Annual Launch Party

Please register for the ‘symposium and afterparty ticket’ If you’d like to attend both.

Background on this event
We are coming together in a unique collaboration to address one of the most pressing questions in contemporary visual culture: the role of artificial intelligence in our visually driven world. Each institution has been exploring themes around AI in various projects, making this joint event the perfect platform for a shared investigation.

Der Greif is set to launch Issue 17, titled "One Day Soon," at both this event and Paris Photo in November 2024. Edited by Torbjørn Rødland, this issue looks beyond traditional photography, reflecting on the rise of generative AI and questioning how photographers and image makers are responding to immense technological shifts. The issue explores how the medium of photography is being pushed forward through AI, with key questions about our place in a rapidly changing world.

Foam Magazine recently published issue 66 titled Mirror Mirror - Photography through the Lens of AI. This publication looks at the growing overlaps between art, technology, and society, exploring how the recent advancements in AI impact our relationship with the image, ourselves, and our perception of reality. How do we form a truthful image of the world when credibility is questioned? And vice versa, how do we recognise ourselves in the images around us?

Photoworks is launching Multi Multi, its latest annual publication, which explores image replication from the start of photography to the digital age, via contemporary artists and writers. AI is pushing the boundaries of data into new frontiers but Multi Multi investigates the logic underpinning mass reproduction, and asks whether what’s happening now is simply an acceleration.

A Cat, A Dog, A Microwave: The cultural practices and politics of image datasets (2024) emerges from The Photographers’ Gallery’s sustained research into computational photography and the networked image. It builds on Data / Set / Match (2019-2020), a research programme that sought new ways to present, visualise and interrogate contemporary image datasets; and unthinking.photography, an online publication and commissioning platform that explores photography's increasingly automated, networked life
Attendees will be able to purchase these publications and more books from our community members. Those who purchase all four publications will be able to redeem a special gift at the event.

Host or Publisher Photoworks