CAIDE Art, AI and Digital Ethics

Welcome to Art, AI and Digital Ethics. We are a research collective for academics, artists and art professionals run out of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics, University of Melbourne. The group was founded by curator and researcher Vanessa Bartlett, with Jasmin Pfefferkorn, Gabby Bush, Kristal Spreadborough, Emilie Sunde and Tyne Daile Sumner.

About

Collaboration between arts and STEM disciplines is increasingly making a powerful contribution to knowledge about digital ethics. Meanwhile, contemporary artists are responding to technology not just as a material or subject matter, but as something that structures every aspect of our lived experience. Art, AI and Digital Ethics might therefore be understood as a rapidly expanding mode of academic and artistic production, where artworks are evolved to encourage reflection on the ethics embodied in human-technology relationships.

The problem with rapid technological expansion is that it affords little space for analysis and care. While Art, AI and Digital Ethics promotes the value of artistic practice as research, there is little discussion about the tensions and value judgments that emerge when art is adopted as a method alongside—or in addition to—writing a journal article or book. Issues of democracy and engagement are often cited on the grounds that an artwork ‘makes people think’. But the aesthetic expertise required to encourage this ethical feeling and deliberation is often treated as secondary. Amid the scramble to frame Art, AI and Digital Ethics as ‘new’ and ‘innovative,’ we forget that artists have been exploring relationships between aesthetics and ethics, art and technology, and art and science for centuries.

Our collective calls for a decentered ethics – an ethics that builds on decolonial attitudes, eco-criticism, and the more-than-human – to understand how to live and collaborate with technology. Our research initiative explores the contribution of art to enquiry about a decentered ethics of Artificial Intelligence and digital innovation, with an emphasis on how artists and curators produce aesthetic encounters and emotional engagements that support ethical feeling and deliberation.

We are guided by two overarching research questions:

What, specifically, do artists and curators bring to the conversation about AI and digital ethics?

The value of aesthetic experience is notoriously difficult to articulate. How do artists and curators allow the ethical dimensions of technological innovation to be experienced and felt, in ways that escape the grasp of other disciplines? How can technology and engineering specialists work with these insights to forge genuinely new directions in digital ethics research?

How do we practice in ethical ways?

Art often invites critique by estranging technologies from their ordinary context and re-presenting them to be understood anew. Is it possible to appropriate data sets and hardware without reproducing their inbuilt ethical dilemmas? How can we sustain critical and creative engagement with technology amid the hype of technological innovation?

For information about our previous research activities, please see here:
PAST ACTIVITIES

Behind your Eyes, Between your Ears

Behind Your Eyes, Between Your Ears (2015) by George Khut. Exhibited in Group Therapy curated by Vanessa Bartlett. With thanks to the artist.

Decentering Ethics with AI Art Book

The Art, AI and Digital Ethics research collective is currently working on an edited volume, titled Decentring Ethics with AI Art. This book argues that artists and cultural institutions are a vital force in the construction of a relational, collectively held ethics of human-machine assemblages. Technological change always out-paces ethical governance, producing an uncertain zone between what machines can do, and what is upheld as ethical by diverse publics. Working quickly and often provocatively, artists trace ethical tensions as they are emerging in public consciousness, providing a vital speculative approach to AI futures.

AI ethics developed by big tech has been critiqued for its performativity and lack of equity. Artists have proposed more radical visions for who or what requires ethical protection, pushing past regulation toward ethics as a way of being in the world. To date, there has been no single volume that explicitly explores art as a way of doing AI ethics with complex human-machine entanglements. Taking AI art as a method, rather than an autonomous generative output, this edited collection explores the relationship between artistic practices, ethics and AI.

People

Our steering committee is an interdisciplinary team with expertise across visual art and curating, music and music psychology, literature, data analytics and digital humanities. We welcome expressions of interest from new members, particularly practicing artists

  • Vanessa
    Dr Vanessa Bartlett

    Mckenzie Postdoctoral Fellow

    Faculty of Arts


    How do technologies shape wellbeing? How does art help us home in on the emotional and experiential implications of this question, in ways that escape the grasp of other disciplines? These questions drive Vanessa’s curatorial practice, in ways that influence not just what she curates, but how she researchers and develops her interdisciplinary projects. Her exhibitions at major international arts spaces, such as FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), UNSW Galleries and Furtherfield, have been seen by over 40,000 people and have featured in The Guardian, Creative Review and BBC Radio 4. She has edited two books for award-winning academic publisher Liverpool University Press (UK), the most recent of which was co-edited with neuroscientist Henrietta Bowden-Jones. Vanessa is currently McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. www.vanessabartlett.com

  • Kristal
    Dr Kristal Spreadborough

    Research Data Specialist

    Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP)


    Kristal Spreadborough is an interdisciplinary researcher with an interest in music, psychology, digital and data ethics, and data driven research. In her current role as Research Data Specialist at the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, Kristal has worked across a range of disciplines including the creative industries, law, education, and the health sciences. For more information on her current activities, please visit: https://kristalspreadborough.github.io/

  • Tyne Sumner
    Dr Tyne Sumner

    ARC Research Fellow

    Faculty of Arts


    Tyne is an ARC DECRA Fellow in English & Digital Humanities at The Australian National University (ANU), working on a project titled Beyond Big Brother: New Narratives for Understanding Surveillance. Her research is at the intersection of surveillance studies, digital culture and the humanities, with an emphasis on how literary texts help us understand human subjectivity under conditions of datafication. She also has expertise in poetry and poetics, digital humanities, cultural data, facial recognition technology, and digital research infrastructures. Tyne’s recent books include Small Data is Beautiful (co-edited, Grattan Street Press 2023) and Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance (Routledge 2021). She has published widely on topics ranging from contemporary fiction, art and film to cultural databases and virtual learning environments. Her current book project is a study of emergent forms of ‘surveillant subjectivity’ in global contemporary fiction. She is also President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH).

  • Jasmin Pfefferkorn
    Dr Jasmin Pfefferkorn

    ARC Research Fellow

    Faculty of Arts


    Jasmin Pfefferkorn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne, working on the ARC Project 'Digital Photography: Mediation, Memory and Visual Communication'. She is a tutor, lecturer and subject coordinator for subjects in the Masters of Global Media Communications, and an Executive Member of the Research Unit in Public Cultures.

    Previously, Jasmin worked as a researcher on the ARC Linkage Project 'Creating The Bilbao Effect: Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) and the Social and Cultural of Urban Regeneration Through Arts Tourism'. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne on emergent museum practice.

  • Gabby
    Gabby Bush

    Program Manager

    Centre for AI and Digital Ethics


    Gabby is the program manager at the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics (CAIDE). In this role, Gabby coordinates the work of CAIDE, including engagement, research dissemination, grants and projects, including work on monitoring and surveillance, bias in algorithms and the CAIDE research stream in Art, AI and Digital Ethics. Gabby joined the Centre from Canberra, where she spearheaded engagement and partnerships in technology and development. Prior to that Gabby ran the eGovernance and Digitisation project for the United Nations Development Program in Samoa. Gabby hails from Aotearoa, New Zealand and has postgraduate qualifications in International Development and Religious Studies.

  • Monica Lim
    Monica Lim

    Pianist and Composer, Student of the Master of Music (Research) in Interactive Composition

    Faculty of Fine Arts and Music


    Monica is a Melbourne-based pianist and composer of classical contemporary and experimental music. Born in Malaysia and then migrating to Australia in her teens, Monica has produced work for theatre, contemporary dance, installations and film, as well as solo and ensemble instrumental pieces. She is interested in new cross-disciplinary genres and forms as well as combinations of new technology with music. Her work has been presented at White Night, Melbourne Fringe and Arts Centre Melbourne. Current projects include Universe, a multiform project with live video, music and contemporary dance for Arts House, Mental Dance, an art-science collaboration with cognitive neuroscience at the University of Melbourne, and the Electromagnetic Piano Project, a series of compositions and recordings for electromagnetic resonator piano supported by the APRA Amcos Art Music Fund. Monica is currently undertaking postgraduate research at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne in gesture-led composition.

  • Willoh S. Weiland
    Willoh S. Weiland

    Artist, Writer, Curator

    Centre for AI and Digital Ethics


    Willoh S. Weiland is an artist, writer and curator. Her work is concerned with creating epic impossible ideas and trying to fulfil them, working with non-artists, the possibilities of liveness and destroying the white male patriarchy. Over 2010–18 she was artistic director/CEO of the artist-led experimental arts organisation Aphids, Melbourne. Currently she is a Creative Associate of the MONA Foma festival, Hobart, and an Honorary Fellow at the Microsoft Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces, University of Melbourne. Her works Forever Now, Void Love and Yelling at Stars (2008–15) explore the relationship between art and infinity by sending artworks into outer space.

    • Emilie Sunde
      Emilie K. Sunde

      PhD Candidate

    • Emilie K. Sunde is a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communications. Her dissertation is a conceptual thesis on photography theory, computation, and AI-images. She is the co-director and co-founder of CODED AESTHETICS. Emilie also has a Masters from Goldsmiths, University of London in Digital Media: Technology and Cultural Form.

Labyrinth Psychotica 2

Labyrinth Pyschotical (2012) Jennifer Kanary Niklov(a). Exhibited in Group Therapy curated by Vanessa Bartlett. With thanks to the Artist

Reading and resources

We draw on a wide range of theory and art practice to guide our investigation of Art, AI and Digital Ethics. Our list of resources is growing and we welcome contributions

Bartlett V (2019) ‘Digital Design and Time on Device: How Aesthetic Experience Can  Help to Illuminate the Psychological Impact of Living in a Digital Culture.’ Digital Creativity 30(3): 177–195. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2019.1637898.

Papastergiadis, N., S. Cubitt, C. Lury, S. McQuire, D. Palmer, J. Pfefferkorn, E. K. Sunde. 2021. ‘Ambient Images’ in The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics Vol. 61-62 pp. 68-77

Pfefferkorn, J. and E. K. Sunde. ‘The Model Museum: AI at the museum-museum interface’. In Z. Papacharissi (ed.) Connective AI (forthcoming, Routledge 2025).

Pfefferkorn, J. ‘Fortified Walls and Digital Flows’. In N.Papastergiadis and D. Wyatt (eds.) Arts Precinct Anthology. (forthcoming, Surpluss 2024).
Pfefferkorn, J. and E. K. Sunde. 2023. ‘Haunted AI’. Published conference proceedings, 11th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X (xCoAx) DOI: 10.34626/xcoax.2023.11th.222.

Pfefferkorn, J. (26 July 2023) ‘Computer written scripts and deepfake actors: what’s at the heart of the Hollywood strikes against generative AI.‘ The Conversation.

Pfefferkorn, J. 2021. ‘Art Museums and Digital Solidarity: a case study of Rediscovering Black Portraiture’. In H. Barranha and J.S. Henriques (eds.) Art, Museums and Digital Cultures. Lisbon: IHA/ MAAT.

Sumner, T. (2020). ‘Beyond Bigness: Can Big Data Have an Ethical Future?’ Data and Inequity: Who’s Missing in Big Data? Ed. Ruth Desouza. 21-27

Sumner, T.D. Cultural Data: The Intimate Analytics of Digital Collections (with Rachel Fensham and Nat Cutter) (forthcoming, Routledge 2025)

Sumner, T.D. Small Data is Beautiful, Eds Rachel Fensham, Tyne Daile Sumner, Signe Ravn, Ashley Barnwell & Danny Butt (Melbourne: Grattan Street Press, 2023)

Sumner, T.D. “The Way the Portal Wrote: Datafication and Subjectivity in Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This.” Special Issue: Literature and Culture and/as Intelligent Systems. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. (forthcoming)

Sumner, T.D. “Pixel, Partition, Persona: Machine Vision and Face Recognition in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.” Special Issue: Cultural Representations of Machine Vision. Open Library of Humanities 9.2 (2023): 1-23.

Sumner, T.D. “The Slipperiness of Name: Biography and Gender in Australian Cultural Databases.” (with Rachel Fensham and Nat Cutter). Gender & History (2023): 1-18.

Sumner, T.D. “Zoom Face: Self-Surveillance, Performance and Display.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 43.6 (2022): 865-879.

Sumner, T.D. “A Game with the Devil: Voyeuristic Surveillance and Cruel Optimism in Christian Boltanski’s The Life of C.B. (2010)” Art/Surveillance. (forthcoming)

Sumner, T.D. “Scale Poetics: Crisis, Data and the Literary Imagination.” Small Data is Beautiful, Eds Rachel Fensham, Tyne Daile Sumner, Signe Ravn, Ashley Barnwell and Danny Butt (Melbourne: Grattan Street Press, 2023): 284-300.

Wyatt, D. and J. Pfefferkorn. 2023. ‘Echoes in Metadata: Scanning the Refuge Archive Across Time, Texts, and Space’. In R. Fensham, T. D. Sumner, S. Ravn, A. Barnwell and D. Butt (eds.) Small Data is Beautiful. Melbourne: Grattan Street Press. Pp. 261-283.