Margaret Rose McGrath
ABSTRACT
The objective of this workshop is to rethink ‘making’ AI through a focus on the physical materials involved in designing, producing, and running artificially intelligent systems. The recent manufacturing chip shortage illuminates digital technologies’ physicality and the fragility of the commodity and production networks that underpin the AI systems our cities, governments, and workplaces have come to rely on. Those that are conventionally considered to ‘make’ AI through the design of AI systems are largely divorced from AI's materiality and the craft of making AI. Corresponding research on AI and creativity focuses primarily on the digital artefacts, potentials and imaginaries AI creates, and less so on the social and material artefacts embedded in its ability to create. We hope to push participants beyond the theoretical knowing of AI materiality to tactile knowing through a practice-based approach to ‘making’ AI. Reorienting the focus of AI to materials and the supply chain as sites of creative intervention could leverage the potential of sensory, tactile experiences to spur reimaginations of AI technologies and infrastructures. Ultimately, the aim is to advance creative approaches to the design of AI systems through the craft of making them.
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