Workshop Art & AI

Program:

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Since the legendary Dartmouth Summer Research Project, which marked the official birth of the field of artificial intelligence in 1957, the development of AI has been a journey full of unexpected twists and turns. It is a story with as many AI summers as there have been AI winters. Recent breakthroughs due to highly improved computational power and optimalisation of algorithms have seen numerous unprecedented and groundbreaking applications. New AI systems and software are introduced on a daily basis and used at an exponential rate. From ChatGPT4, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, MidJourney, Sora, MusicLM, MusicNet to open-source libraries and systems such as TensorFlow, Keras or PyTorch; they all show impressive results and an even more impressive future ahead. It is an evolution which is poised to have an everlasting impact on practically all artistic disciplines.

But as fast as these new tools are being used, their development is not completely unexpected. Most AI techniques are based on principles and techniques with roots in information theory, mathematics and data science. One of the goals in this course is to give an insight into these fundamental techniques and methods from a layman's perspective. In this way the summer course will provide you with a bottom up and deeper conceptual understanding of the various AI models and systems. As such it will also enable you to incorporate AI in a meaningful and effective manner in your own artistic practice.

This summer course is intended for artists and creative minds alike. No previous knowledge is required. You also do not need to have coding experience to follow this course.

This summer course is organized into three sessions:

Sesssion 1: 3 hours on day 1 (04/10 : 18u30 - 21u30)

Foundations of AI

-- Origins of AI and Art and AI

-- Subfields in AI

-- Forms of (A)I

-- Limitations of AI

Key concepts in AI (Part1)

-- Learning strategies

-- AI and data

-- Fundamental principles of (artificial) neural networks (ANN) and Deep Learning

Session 2: 7 hours on day 1 (05/10 : 10u00 - 17u00)

Key concepts in AI (Part2)

-- ANN's and Deep Learning in artistic context

-- Understanding the mechanisms behind Generative AI (Generative Adversarial Networks, GAN)

How to design and use custom AI systems

-- Design of use problem

-- Data management

-- Choice/design of AI algorithms/model

-- Model training and testing

-- Real world model application and model fine tuning

Practice Session 1: AI applications in music and sound (art)

Sesssion 3: 7 hours on day 2 (06/10 : 10u00 - 17u00)

Implications of AI for the arts

-- Ethics of AI

-- Authorship, copyright and AI

-- Future of (human) creativity

-- Democratization of AI

-- Building responsible AI systems for artistic practices

Practice Session 2: AI applications in visual and multimedia art

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Requirements:

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This summer course does not require any previous coding or sceintific knowledge. All techniques and principles will be explained from the start. You'll need a laptop to follow this course. As to software we'll be using open-source software Python and free libraries, Google Colab and MaxMSP. As to MaxMSP you can follow this course using a demo version of this software.

Planning and location of the summer course:

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17 hours in total. This 3 day summer course runs from 04/10 till 06/10. On 04/10 from 18u30 till 21u30 and and on 05/10 and 06/10 from 10u00 till 17u00. The course will be held at Center-MCS located at the Nieuwewijkstraat 1 in Ghent (BE).

Cost of the summer course:

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Regular ticket: 165 €

Student ticket (*): 130 €

A maximum of 10 participants can join this workshop

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(*) For a student ticket please contact us via [email protected] and include a scan of a valid proof of student enrollment. Upon validation of the proof of enrollment you'll receive a discount code that you can use when purchasing your ticket. Students from a University or a University College are eligible for student price.

About the teacher of this summer course

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Teacher of this summer course is Valery Vermeulen. He's a Belgian electronic musician, mathematician, music producer , visiting professor at the Music Production department of the KASK-Conservatorium School of Art in Gent, guest lecturer the Master Artscience KABK Den Hague and researcher at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Antwerp University (BE). He holds a Phd in pure mathematics from Ghent University (BE) as well as a masters degree in Music Composition at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent (BE). Apart from his artistic and teaching activities Vermeulen has been working professionally as a data scientist/statistician since 2005.

In his work Valery focuses on he intersection between electronic music, data sonification and visualisation, AI and theoretical physics. His work has been widely shown in Belgium as well as abroad and was featured in numerous magazines and news outlets such as BB6 (UK), Music Radar (US), Tech Radar (US), The Wire (UK), Electronic Sound Magazine (UK), New Scientist (NL), Neural Magazine (IT), DJ Mag (US), Mixmag (UK, Asia and Korea), Trax Magazine (FR), Deutschland Funk (DE), Radio Eins (DE), Radio Canada (CA), Yle Radio1 (FI), The Wire UK on Air (UK), VRT Radio1 (BE), VRT Radio2 (BE) and VRT Max (BE) to name but a few.

With his project Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, merging electronic music and black hole astrophysics, Vermeulen received an Honory Mention from the prestigious S+T+Arts Prize Ars Electronica, a yearly prize for artscience projects issued on behalf of the European Commission.

More info on his background can be found via www.valeryvermeulen.net.

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Enrollment additional info:

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-If you would like to have more info on the summer course please send an email to [email protected].

Host or Publisher Centre for Music, Coding and Sound Design