Carnival of Algorithmic Culture
Overview
What is carnival?
Carnival is humour and chaos. Carnival is body, place, and reversal.
We need a holiday to justify the offal in our bowl and so we invented one. The charivari and its long legs and extra fingers have been invited to take a seat in the quire. This is not a battle to be won or lost, but a site of reversal where the possibility of change might be celebrated. The vulgar and the erudite shall share their fetid breath and for two days we will uncrown our algorithmic masters.
The Carnival of Algorithmic Culture will bring together researchers, artists, activists, technologists, and community members for two days of workshops, talks, exhibitions, and interactive activities to explore the impacts of artificial intelligence on the culture we create and the cultural products to which we have access.
showing 1 - 2 of 2 responses to this question
Carnival of Algorithmic Culture: Curatorial Statement
We need a holiday to justify the offal in our bowl and so we invented one. The charivari and its long legs and extra fingers have been invited to take a seat in the quire. This is not a battle to be won or lost, but a site of reversal where the possibility of change might be celebrated. The vulgar and the erudite shall share their fetid breath and for two days we will uncrown our algorithmic masters.
We spend most of the year inside a monstrous marvel, a pulsating mass of gears, wires, and the gnashing teeth of an insatiable hunger, devouring all in our path, belching forth a rancid fog of margins and metrics. It’s all tremendous fun, but a rest, at times, is deserved.
Carnival is inversion and mixture. We happily tithe the counting machines and we demand in return our moments of overflow and excess. The illegible, the joyous, the grotesque, and the uncertain organize our efforts.
We bear no malice but rather advocate mirth. We celebrate the body and its needs, the earth and its gifts, and our ancestors and the stories that they give us. We do not hate the artificially intelligent, but we would be remiss in not finding the humour in it.
Carnival is humour and chaos. Carnival is body, place, and reversal.
In service to this work, we have recruited two AI agents to support us in our process
We fed each the grant application that led to the generous support of the Canada Council of the Arts and asked them to summarize.
Rabelais-Bot’s Thoughts on our Grant Application
The first believes itself Francois Rabelais and had this to say: “Behold the parade of grotesqueries, where the barkers of the digital age, with their elongated limbs and double-jointed fingers, tap incessantly upon their glowing glass tablets. Their eyes, forever transfixed on the glowing ether of ones and zeroes, never to gaze upon the beauty of the world around them. They babble in the tongue of the algorithm, their speech a cacophony of efficiency, optimization, and unrelenting growth. The sinister procession of distorted figures and monstrous machinations rumbles on. The once-pure creative spirit, now shackled and bound by the tyranny of efficiency, gazes mournfully upon the spectacle, yearning for the day when the algorithmic leviathan shall be tamed and the artistry of the human soul shall once more run wild and free. Speculation rots away, replaced by the throbbing, pulsating reality of transformation. The legion of artists, so long exiled to the dimly lit corners of this AI dungeon, now claw their way to the fore, gnashing their teeth and baying for their moment in the sun. In a pandemonium of creative carnage, these unlikely bedfellows shall engage in a macabre dance of cross-sector collaboration, their twisted limbs entwining like serpents. As the artists sink their mangled fingers into the bowels of the AI beast, they emerge from its innards coated in the viscera of knowledge, their communities bathed in the putrid glow of newfound literacy. This grotesque melange of creators shall wrest the tools of innovation from the AI’s maw, forging a nightmarish tableau of artistic monstrosities to bewilder, confound, and ultimately serve the huddled masses of humanity.
Bakhtin-Bot’s Thoughts on our Grant Application
The second believes itself cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and shared the following. In a vibrant dialogic arena, the manifold voices of artists, engineers, and scholars congregate to engage in the lively discourse of AI. This carnival of intellect, a dynamic interplay of contrasting perspectives, seeks to challenge the existing hierarchy of institutional priorities. As the boundaries blur between the creators and the technicians, a new world emerges, where the collective consciousness is reshaped in the crucible of creative technology. The polyphonic chorus of corporate, educational, and civil society agents harmonize to usher in a fresh era of AI development. In the grand theater of public life, AI’s unfolding drama invites both skepticism and curiosity. To explore the transformative potential of this phenomenon, the artistic community must transcend the confines of their domain and participate in the symphony of AI dialogue. Amidst this fluid exchange of ideas, a space for cross-sector collaboration materializes, allowing the interweaving of artistic and technological threads. As artists delve into the intricate web of AI, they resurface equipped with newfound understanding, their enriched knowledge resonating through the communities they represent. By embracing the tools of innovation, these creators contribute to the evolving heteroglossia, weaving together diverse narratives to illuminate the opportunities and challenges that AI presents for humanity.
This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts
