Electronic Life is evoked as a wide arching term, to allow for intersections of art, science, and technology, and with a keen consideration for how we live together and indeed what constitutes as ‘life’. The phrase takes its initial inspiration from James Lovelock, who uses it to describe a coming era of artificial intelligence. His contention, underpinning all life, he argues, is that the ‘bit’ is the basic unit of information: ‘I see a bit as primarily an engineering term, the tiniest thing from which all else is constructed’.
Electronic Life – devised and led by Ed D’Souza and Sunil Manghani (University of Southampton) – responds to the ‘Grand Challenge’ of artificial intelligence (AI). It represents a unique partnership of Tate, The Alan Turing Institute and Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.
Electronic Life seeks to enable and embed expertise, skills, capacity and critical understanding of the impact/opportunities of AI in the context of the visual arts and wider creative sector. Working in the context of Tate Britain’s Digital Studio, the focus is on working with young people and marginalised groups; helping to enhance Tate’s critical concerns of place, access and identity (e.g. decolonising the collection; broadening access to its spaces, collections and resources; understanding locality and localism of a national collection).
Electronic Life represents a unique initiative to broaden anddeepen expertise, skills and capacity as well as provide a critical context to test and challenge new developments in generative AI. As such, we seek to:
- Provide new impetus, expertise and capacities: Tate Britain is keen to re-open, re-focus and build back the use of its ‘Digital Studio’, post-pandemic, as part of the wider museum offer; while supporting this offer to keep pace with burgeoning new technologies and developments, notably with AI.
- Diversify the public conversation, enable skills, foster new stakeholders in AI: Tate, Alan Turing Institute and the co-investigators are looking to engage with existing and new audiences, particularly young adults and marginalised communities, to develop engagement, thinking and application of skills in areas of technological change and creativity as part of a larger objective of supporting the development of the UK’s digital economic future.
Over the longer term ‘Electronic Life’ seeks to provide a platform, of benefit to a wide number of colleagues and students across the Faculty, as a beacon of public engagement. Overall, Electronic Life provides a forum for new, provocative ideas and creative practices, aimed at cross-cutting debates and inquiry.
Read more: Learning the Machine →
Ed D’Souza is Professor of Critical Practice at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (UK). He is Editor of Journal of Visual Art Practice. His books include India’s Biennale Effect (2016), Barcelona Masala: Narratives and Interactions in Cultural Space (2013) and Outside India: Dialogues and Documents of Art and Social Change (2012). His work has been exhibited widely including Bergen Kunstall 3,14 (2019), osloBIENNALEN (2019), India Habitat Centre (2019), Tate Exchange, Tate Modern (2018) and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014).
Sunil Manghani is Professor of Theory, Practice & Critique at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (UK). He is Editor of Journal of Visual Art Practice and Managing Editor of Theory, Culture & Society. His books include Image Studies (2013), Rhythm and Critique(2020), Zero Degree Seeing (2019), India’s Biennale Effect (2016) and Farewell to Visual Studies(2015). He curated Barthes/Burgin at the John Hansard Gallery (2016), along with Building an Art Biennale (2018) and Itinerant Objects (2019) at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern.
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