“Bodies, machines and smart synergies: Two panel discussions on art and artificial intelligence”

“Bodies, machines and smart synergies” curated by Daphne Dragona and organized by ARTWORKS took place on Tuesday June 21, 2022 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST). During the two panels “ ‘Able’ (or not) bodies and sovereign technologies” and “Forms of synergy and co-creation through art”, the discussions touched on issues such as art and artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, politics and aesthetics, while the SNF ARTWORKS Fellows, whose work is inspired by AI and technology, gave brief presentations about their practice. Thank you all for joining us and special thanks to EMST for hosting us.

Watch the panel discussions here:

Program

19:00 – 20:15 – ‘Able’ (or not) bodies and sovereign technologies
Participants: Participants: Dimitris Gkinosatis, Irini Kalaitzidi, Petros Moris, Maria Varela. Moderated by Daphne Dragona
A panel on the evolution and comparison of human and artificial intelligence, the limitations of control and handling of ΑΙ by humans, and the impact of its applications on life and the body, as well as on new physicalities and embodied experiences.

20:15 – 21:30 – Forms of synergy and co-creation through art
Participants: Manolis Daskalakis Lemos, Kyriaki Goni, Theodoros Giannakis, Manolis Simos. Moderated by Marina Markellou
A panel on the possibilities of the synergy of human and artificial intelligence, with reference to issues of production, intellectual property and authenticity, as well as the changing role of the artist, the public and the artwork itself.

Browse some photos from the event here:

Biographies of invited speakers

Maria Varela, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019

Maria Varela (b. 1984, Athens) is a visual artist. In 2010, she completed an MA in Interactive Media at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is interested in developing methodologies of collective production. In her practice, she draws her themes from the areas of folklore, tradition, identity, memory, non-linear narratives and the archaeology of media. She has presented her work in numerous exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including in museums (EMST, Athens; Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels) and art festivals, such as: Siggraph in Vancouver; Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (Austria); transmediale Festival in Berlin; International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) in Seattle; Piksel Festival in Bergen; amber Festival in Istanbul; and Visual Dialogues 2013 (Onassis Stegi) in Athens. In addition, alongside her practice she develops and implements educational creative programs in collaboration with Onassis Stegi, the EMST, the Goethe Institut, the Michael Cacoyiannis Foundation and NEON Organization for Culture and Development. She was a co-founder and artistic and educational program manager of Frown, a platform created to develop artistic events promoting innovative practices. She lives and works in Athens.

Theodoros Giannakis, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019

Theodoros Giannakis was born in Preveza, Greece, in 1979. A graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, he holds an MFA  in Digital Media Management from London Metropolitan University in London. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Visual Arts Department of the Athens School of Fine Arts, studying under a scholarship from the A.G. Leventis Foundation. He has presented his work in solo exhibitions at Union Pacific (London), Eleni Koroneou Gallery (Athens), Radio Athènes (Αthens) and SPACE (London) and has participated in international group exhibitions in a number of art spaces, museums and institutions, including: New Museum (New York); EMST (Athens); Delphi Archaeological Museum; Fondazione Prada (Milan); Ontario College of Art and Design; V22 collection (London) and the Futura Center for Contemporary Art (Prague). As a member of the art group KERNEL, he has organized exhibitions and events and has been invited to speak about his research at the ICA London, EMST, the National Hellenic Research Foundation and the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Dimitris Ginosatis, Academic Researcher

Dimitris Ginosatis holds a PhD in Media Philosophy and Aesthetics from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (2008). He works as a writer, translator and editor; lecturer in both public and private universities; as well as consultant in the area of conceptual analysis, research and methodology. Since 2009, he has been adjunct faculty and Academic Fellow at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he has taught the modules “Media Philosophy & Aesthetics”, “Theories & Technologies of Aesthetic Perception” and “Research Methodology”, offered to students of the Postgraduate Studies Program Digital Forms of Art as well as to undergraduates of the Department of Visual Arts. In addition, he teaches the module “Media Aesthetics” at AKTO educational group in Athens, as part of the undergraduate program Visual Arts and New Media. He has written and published specialist essays on philosophy as well as on media theory and aesthetics, and has contributed to academic conferences, symposia, workshops and seminars organized by universities and organizations based in Greece (Panteion University of Social and Political Science, Athens School of Fine Arts, Ionian University, Benaki Museum and Goethe Institut Athen) or abroad (Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle; documenta 14; McLuhan Center for Culture & Technology at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto; and Ontario College of Arts & Design University, among others). He has translated into Greek fifteen titles from the fields of continental philosophy (J. Derrida, M. Foucault, P. Klossowski, S. Kofman), political theory and bioethics (D. Simon, J. Romance, M. Sandel), sociology (H. Lefebvre), aesthetics (N. Bourriaud) and French literature (J. Tournier, M. de Sade, G. de Maupassant). He has also collaborated in the translation of essays by S. Freud, V. Flusser and Fr. Kittler.

Kyriaki Goni, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018

Kyriaki Goni is a visual artist. Her practice focuses on the relationships and interactions between technology and society. Using narrative techniques and multi-media installations, she explores themes such as the power of information, networks, the perception and construction of the digital self, memory, forgetting, and the relationship between humans and machines. Her work has been exhibited internationally in the context of new media festivals and exhibitions (transmediale festival in Berlin; Melbourne Triennial; Athens Biennale; Tomorrows: Urban fictions for possible futures presented at Diplareios School in Athens and Le lieu unique in Nantes; International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA21, etc). In addition, as part of her artistic and research practice, she designs and implements workshops for adults and teenagers on topics related to the digital sphere (personal data and privacy, the selfie, etc.), in collaboration with various institutions and institutes including the Dutch Art Institute, Onassis Stegi, Athens Science Festival, etc. She also presents her research at art and technology conferences. Her article “Deletion Process_Only you Can See my History” was published in August 2016 in the journal Leonardo, MIT Press. She holds an undergraduate degree in Visual Arts and a postgraduate degree in Digital Forms of Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts; a BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Panteion University of Social and Political Science; and an MSc in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Manolis Daskalakis Lemos, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018

Manolis D. Lemos (b. 1989, Athens) is an artist and musician living and working in Athens. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London. He is a founding member of Serapis Maritime and of Arbit City. In his work, he uses a variety of media as a means to approach different ways of envisaging the future or of reflecting on the past, often starting from a personal reference point. In 2018, he participated in the New Museum’s Triennial Songs for Sabotage, curated by Alex Gartenfeld και Gary Carrion-Murayari. In 2017, he spent 9 months at Pavillon Neuflize OBC, the artist-in-residency program of Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In addition, he has participated in several of the initiatives organized by 89plus, an international research project co-founded by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Solo exhibitions include: Tomorrow’s Corporate Love (Forgetting from Athens), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017; Crooked Grid Crude Carrier, CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Athens, 2015; Feral Remnants/Oinousses, CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Athens, 2013.

Daphne Dragona, Curator

Daphne Dragona is a Berlin-based independent curator, theorist and writer. Her work engages with the controversies of connectivity, the promises of the commons, the importance of affective infrastructures and the ambivalent role of technology in relation to the climate crisis. She has curated several exhibitions, including Weather Engines (Onassis Stegi & National Observatory of Athens, 2022); Stefania Strouza 212 Medea: Stories from a suspended space (AnnexM, Athens Concert Hall, 2021); Trials & Errors (Romantso, Athens, 2021); Reprogramming Earth (NeMe, Limassol, 2020); Kyriaki Goni, Counting Craters on the Moon (Aksioma, Ljubljana, 2019); Tomorrows: Urban fictions for possible futures (Diplareios School, Athens; and Le lieu unique, Nantes, 2017); Capture All (transmediale, Berlin, 2015); Afresh, a new generation of Greek artists (National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013); Homo Ludens Ludens (Laboral, Gijon, 2008). Her articles have figured in books, journals, magazines, and exhibition catalogs published by Springer, Sternberg Press, Diaphana Press, and Leonardo Electronic Almanac, among others. As a guest speaker, she has given lectures in events organized by Mapping Festival (Geneva), MoMA (New York), House of Electronic Arts (HEK, Basel), Arts in Society Research Network (London), Leuphana University (Lueneburg, Germany), Goethe University (Frankfurt). Between 2015 and 2019, she was a curator for transmediale festival in Berlin, while in the period 2021-2022 she was a curator for European Media Art Festival (EMAF) in Osnabrück, Germany. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Communication & Media Studies of the University of Athens.

Irini Kalaitzidi, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

Irini Kalaitzidi is a dance and computational artist. Her practice is situated within the field of technoscience and explores dancing bodies in the space between the human and the nonhuman, the physical and the digital, the familiar and the uncanny. She is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance (2018) and holds an ΜFΑ (w/ distinction) in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (2019). Her artworks have been exhibited in Athens (Pistachios, Arc 2016) and London (mic | amplify the body and Within the Vibrant Assemblage, St. James Hatcham Church, Goldsmiths, 2019). In 2019, she was invited to give a talk on art and artificial intelligence in the context of the Human Data Interaction workshop held in Somerset House, London. She has participated in a number of research programs, including the Choreographic Coding Lab, organized jointly by Motion Bank and the International Choreographic Arts Center (ICK) in Amsterdam (Dansmakers, 2019). As a dancer, she has performed in productions of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival and at the Athens Concert Hall. In addition, she collaborated with Patricia Apergi as assistant choreographer for the productions Alcestis (Athens & Epidaurus Festival, 2017) and The Primary Fact (Fast Forward Festival 5, Onassis Stegi, 2018). She has held residencies at Kinono Gathering (Tinos, 2020); and at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts (Zhdk). She is based between Athens, Tinos and London.

Marina Markellou, Lawyer

Dr. Marina Markellou is a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Law. After obtaining a degree from the Faculty of Law, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master’s in Intellectual Property (Master 2, Spécialité Créations Immatérielles) from the University of Montpellier I in France, she continued her studies in Montpellier I with a PhD thesis entitled “The Copyright Contracts under French, German and Greek law”, studying under a scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation in Greece. Subsequently, she completed a post-doctoral thesis on artistic appropriation at the Faculty of Law, University of Poitiers, France. In the last decade, she has been lecturing on intellectual property law, cultural heritage law and business law at the Ionian University, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Hellenic Open University, University of Nicosia and Open University of Cyprus, on both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Petros Moris, SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018

Petros Moris has received a BFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts and an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently studying towards a PhD at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, under a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation. He has been nominated for the DESTE Prize (2015) and awarded the Spyropoulos Prize (2012). He has presented solo exhibitions in galleries and art spaces across Europe, including at Room E-1027 (Berlin); Point Center for Contemporary Arts (Nicosia); Duve Berlin; as well as the art spaces Union Pacific, Project Native Informant and SPACE in London. In addition, he has participated in group exhibitions held in museums, institutions and art spaces, among others at New Museum (New York); Museum of Cycladic Art (Athens); EMST; Delphi Archeological Museum; House of Cyprus; Kunstraum Niederoesterreich; Ontario College of Art and Design; Centre Cívic Can Felipa (Barcelona); Mestrovic Pavilion (Zagreb); and Aarhus Art Building (Denmark). As part of the art collective KERNEL and of the curatorial projects SIM and Radical Reading, he has curated exhibitions and events shown at Athens Biennale 2011, Circuits and Currents, Whitechapel Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery. In addition, he has been invited to talk about his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, the EMST, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the KAM Workshops and the National Hellenic Research Foundation.

Manolis Simos, Academic researcher

Manolis Simos is undertaking postdoctoral research (under a grant by the State Scholarship Foundation in Greece) at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), where he teaches postgraduate modules on philosophy of technology, ethics of technology as well as on the relation between literature, science and technology. He holds a degree in history and philosophy of science from the NKUA and has studied European literature at the University of Cambridge, where he also completed his doctoral thesis on the thought of Michel Foucault. His research interests lie in the areas of philosophy of science and technology, the relationship between philosophy and literature, metaphilosophy, the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, and the history of concepts. His work has been published in both Greek and international journals.

All photos by Spiro Stergiou.