Course Outline

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Main Teaching Staff: Nora al Badri & Felix Stalder

This is a joint module for BFA students (ZHdK) and BA students of Computer Science (ETH) to bring together artistic and technological perspectives taking place in both universities. Our starting point is to consider «Artificial Intelligence» (AI) as a historical-material practice, that is, shaped by the concrete conditions of its development and use. The special focus is on the “Personas of AI”, that is, the way we encounter different AI applications (as assistants, experts, helpers, friends, oracles etc.), but also how they encounter us, that is, what they assume about and expect from us.

We will combine theoretical reflection, artistic and technical practices, and hands-on group work.

We will address the current discourse within our democratically shaped society around AI. The main topics will be:

AI personas, personhood, agents
ecology, subjectivity
history of AI, (de)colonial practices
non-Western, indigenous, marginalized AI
creating with/ about AI

The students get to know a completely new field (art ←→ computer science). They have tested how inspiring interdisciplinary collaboration can be and applied their newly acquired knowledge by designing a practice-oriented project/ AI+Art prototype in mixed groups. In addition, they take away with them the social and ecological contribution that can be made with ML.

At the end of the seminar, interdisciplinary teams will develop concepts for joint practice-related projects in AI and art.

Date: 7.-11.04.2025 (Monday voluntary for ETH students)

Time: 09:00 -17:00 (except Friday, 09:00 - 13:00)

Location

Monday - Wednesday @ZHDK (Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8031 Zürich)
- 7.04. ZT 5.D02
- 8. & 9.04. ZT 6.K03

Thursday - Friday @ETH (Universitätstrasse 2, 8092 Zürich)
- 10. &11. 04. LFW B3

Requirements (for ZHdK Students)

Presence, at least 80%

Contribution to discussions in class¨

Participation in group work and presentation of results.

Monday voluntary for ETH students

Technical and practical introduction to AI for artisits with Alexandre Puttick

Some of the concepts covered are:

linear regressions
loss functions
gradient descent
latent space
generation
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for LLMs

Morning

Introduction to the course and overview of the week
First Group Work: What persona does the AI app you are using have` What does it expect from the user?
5 Minute presentation by each group

Artist presentation & discussion by Nora Al-Badri

Afternoon

Technological Persona. Input by Felix Stalder

Group work: Reading, Presenting, Discussion
- Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1976. Introduction, 1-16
- Reeves, Byron, and Clifford Nass. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media like Real People and Places. New York: Cambridge university press, 1996. PDF
  - Chapter 7. Personality of Interfaces, 89-99
  - Chapter 8. Imitating Personality, 101- 109
- Reeves, Byron, and Clifford Nass. The Media Equation
  - Chapter 14. Gender, 161-170
  - Chapter 15. Voices, 171-180
- Niederberger, Shusha. “Calling the User: Interpellation and Narration of User Subjectivity in Mastodon and Trans*Feminist Servers.” A Peer-Reviewed Journal About 12, no. 1 (September 7, 2023): 177–91.
- Lewis, Jason Edward, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite. “Making Kin with the Machines.” Journal of Design and Science, July 16, 2018.**