Both artists and astronomers play a crucial role in transforming our observations of the universe into compelling narratives. The exhibit Cosmos: The Art of Observing the Universe at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, UK, explores this fascinating process.
“We recalibrate our perceptions through prolonged gazing,” says the exhibition curator, artist Ione Parkin. This exhibition, running until April 19, invites visitors to dive into their own observational journey, merging art and science in unique insights.
The image above illustrates how Janet Kerr collaborated with communities in Iceland, Greenland, the Shetland Islands, and Somerset to create stunning solar graphs that capture the sun over months of exposure.
This work by Alex Hartley intricately intertwines solar panels with photographs of Neolithic standing stones, illustrating the continuity of solar technology from ancient to contemporary times.
Parkin’s vibrant paintings swirl in red, orange, and bright white, evoking the dynamic nature of superheated plasma from the sun’s surface.
Finally, Michael Porter’s Impossible Landscape explores the realms beyond empirical knowledge, blending familiar geological textures with otherworldly aesthetics, prompting viewers to dream beyond the observable universe.
At 300 Ashland Place in downtown Brooklyn, The Plaza will feature attendees gathered around a large yellow shipping container adorned with a black triangle. I acknowledge that the Flying Goose Quilt pattern may have functioned as a covert signal for enslaved individuals seeking freedom along the Underground Railroad. This design and the containers create a connection between the historical and contemporary narratives of the African diaspora. Central to an artistic initiative by Brooklyn-based transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins, a large screen showcases AI-generated imagery reflecting urban diversity.
Commissioned by the New York-based art nonprofit Moartia Art and developed in collaboration with architect Lot-EK and The AI Laboratory, the exhibit titled Otherwise, Who Will Do It? will be open until September 28th. It aims to confront the ideologies of white supremacy by emphasizing the resilience and cultural foundations of the Black community.
In an era where society increasingly relies on AI, Dinkins envisions a future where these models comprehend and reflect the histories, aspirations, and realities of Black and Brown communities, thereby providing a more accurate representation of U.S. demographics. She expresses belief that her initiatives will reshape the AI landscape, challenging the prevailing bias in data that fails to represent the global majority. Currently, Black individuals comprise merely 7.4% of the high-tech workforce. Studies indicate that a lack of diversity in AI can lead to biased outcomes, as seen with predictive policing tools affecting Black communities and tenant screening programs that discriminate against people of color.
“We can develop machines that offer deeper insights into our community. Our representations should not stem from outsiders, which often results in misinterpretation; instead, they should reflect our identities as human beings, not merely as consumers,” Dinkins stated. “I pose the question: ‘Can we establish a system rooted in care and generosity?'”
If we don’t step up, who will? The AI Research Institute is situated in downtown Brooklyn, New York City. Photo: Driely Carter
Inside the AI lab, one image features a young Black girl with an afro, her gaze piercingly directed at the audience, accentuating her artificiality. Surrounding the public art installation are QR codes linked to an app that allows users worldwide to respond to prompts, such as “What privilege do you hold in society?” This interactive element integrates with the container; shortly thereafter, a generated image reflecting the submitted information will appear on the large screen. This image—mainly portraying a person of color—continues until new data is provided, regardless of the submitter’s own identity.
Dinkins has programmed the AI-generated art to focus on Black and Brown perspectives. She adjusted various AI models that identify patterns through specific datasets. Collaborating with her team, they sourced images from the renowned Black photographer Roy DeCarava, who documented the lives of Black individuals in Harlem. They also incorporated African American English to shape models recognizing its distinct tonality, resulting in more authentic image generation based on user stories. Additionally, she included images of okra—a staple in dishes of enslaved Africans and their descendants—serving as symbols connecting the past to the present within the portraits.
“We exist within a technological framework that’s altering our reality. If we remain uninformed, we lose the ability to navigate it effectively,” Dinkins remarked. While she empathizes with the public’s urge to protect privacy in the age of AI, she emphasizes the necessity of spaces that clarify that certain information is not intended for exploitation.
Democratizing AI
Dinkins was recognized as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI for 2023. With no formal technology education, she identifies as a “tinkerer.” She portrays Bina Rothblatt, the founder of a for-profit initiative focused on extending human life, inspired by a YouTube video featuring Bina48, an AI robot, more than a decade ago.
Her ongoing project Conversations with Bina48 documents video interviews with this robotic entity, starting in 2014. Later, she developed her own AI system intended to serve as a memoir for a Black American family. Through her initiative, It’s Not the Only One, Dinkins created a voice-responsive device that engages with passersby while being trained to converse with Nie and her aunt.
Lewis Tude Sokey, an English professor at Boston University, suggests Dinkins’ work is a crucial step toward democratizing AI by bringing technology to marginalized voices in spaces traditionally devoid of their representation. “There exists a troubling precedent of algorithms producing racist and sexist content. They are often trained on data from the internet, rife with harmful stereotypes,” Tude Sokey, who specializes in technology and race, explained.
If we don’t, who will address these dynamics? The AI Research Institute is situated in downtown Brooklyn, New York City. Photo: Driely Carter
“What Stephanie aims to explore is the possibility of training different algorithms to respond to diverse datasets that liberate content and include socially marginalized perspectives,” Tude Sokey noted.
Dinkins and fellow artists are reshaping the AI narrative, as highlighted by Tude Sokey: “There’s a significant cultural, political, and social realignment occurring within AI.” Dinkins embraces a philosophy she refers to as Afro-Now Rhythm, which she interprets as a proactive approach toward building a more equitable world—a “celebration of the potential to see technology as a force we can harness rather than fear.”
For Beth Coleman, a professor at the University of Toronto specializing in technology and society, it is vital to train AI models using diverse datasets to ensure accurate representations of the world. Dinkins’ work questions which voices are integrated into the technological ecosystems, she emphasized.
“There exists a thriving energy around collaborative efforts to craft a better world together,” Coleman remarked regarding Dinkins’ initiatives. “At this juncture, it feels profoundly revolutionary.”
Four decades ago, a 4-drawer filing cabinet was necessary to house 10,000 documents. Now, it only requires 736 floppy disks to hold the same volume of files. The cloud allows for the storage of 10,000 documents without occupying physical space.
With the evolution of data storage comes a transformation in the information landscape. This evolution poses challenges related to the storage, transfer, and proper utilization of individuals’ personal data.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) organized an exhibition at the Manchester Central Library this week, showcasing 40 items that demonstrate the evolution of data privacy. Each item illustrates how access to information has changed over the past four decades and how data has become pivotal in major news events.
John Edwards, a member of the intelligence committee, expressed his appreciation for the exhibition, emphasizing the importance of human influence in data-related matters. He highlighted the significance of understanding terms like data controller, data processor, and data subject.
The exhibition features various items, including Pokemon toys, floppy disks, Tesco Club cards, modems, Millennium bug brochures, soccer shirts, and Covid vaccination cards. It also showcases how ICO interventions have brought about societal changes, such as ending the construction industry’s “employment denial list” and implementing public food hygiene assessments for restaurants.
One of Edwards’ favorite exhibition items is the spiked lawn aerator shoes, symbolizing an early enforcement action in the 1980s against a company selling customer information obtained from shoe sales.
My favourite item at the exhibition by Intelligent John Edwards is the spiked grass aerator shoes. Photo: Christopher Tormond/The Guardian
The 40th pedestal at the exhibition remains unused, inviting the public to suggest objects that have influenced the data landscape. Edwards emphasized the personal and subjective nature of privacy, stating that each individual has unique expectations and experiences.
The ICO was founded as a UK data protection regulator near Manchester 40 years ago and now oversees new data protection laws. The regulatory landscape has undergone significant transformations since its inception.
NHS Covid Vaccination Card. Photo: Andy Rain/EPA
According to Edwards, individuals now have a significantly larger amount of personal data worldwide compared to when the ICO was established. The constant flow of data worldwide illustrates the extensive data environment we now exist in.
Edwards highlighted the challenge of keeping pace with the rapid changes in technology and data usage. The ICO regulates a wide range of entities, from small schools and GP surgeries to large social media companies, requiring continuous adaptation to address privacy implications.
Reflecting on the future, Edwards acknowledged the uncertain geopolitical landscape, emphasizing the potential impact of quantum computing and advanced AI technologies on data handling and privacy in the coming years.
On an early summer day of 1876 near Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, a middle-aged woman carrying three large, corrupt mushrooms repelled fellow travelers in horse-drawn carriages.
Even wrapped in paper, the foul smell of the aptly named Stinkhorn mushroom was overwhelming, but the woman suffocated her laughter as two other passengers griped about the surrounding flies. The smell didn’t bother her. All she cared about was to bring specimens home to study them, she would write later.
This is Mary Elizabeth Banning, a self-taught mycologist who has been doing creative research into Maryland fungi for nearly 40 years.
Miss Bunning characterized thousands of specimens she found in the countryside of Baltimore and its surrounding areas, identifying 23 new species in science at the time.
The talented artist has collected these observations into a manuscript called “Maryland Fungi.” It consisted of 175 stunning watercolor paintings, each with an accurate yet intimate portrait of a particular species, as well as detailed scientific explanations and anecdotes about the collection of mushrooms.
The manuscript was Miss Bunning’s life work, and she wanted to see it published. But it ended in the drawers of the New York State Museum in Albany and has been forgotten for almost a century.
Her watercolors make up the backbone Exhibition at the museum It will open this month and will run until January 4th next year. The exhibition, called “Outcasts,” recognizes not only the museum’s Mycology collection, but also the museum’s Mycology Collection, as well as the museum’s Mycology Collection.
Miss Banning is known as the fungus “vegetable exile.” At the time (and throughout 1969) fungi were classified as distinctive plants. Most botanistsFrom the mid-19th century, their research was considered a backwater of research.
It was the exile who banned herself. “She was very much hoping to be part of the science community,” said John Haynes, a museum’s mycology curator until she retired in 2005 and a wide-ranging study of her history. But as a woman living in the 19th century, the path was largely closed to her.
Like her contemporaries like Beatrix Potter, she tried to make her mark in the emerging field of mycology.
One scientist gave her Charles Horton Peck, who worked at the museum as New York’s first national botanist from 1868 to 1913. A prominent American mycologic man, Peck has dedicated most of his career to fungi, gathering over 33,000 specimens in a New York survey, surpassing 2,700 New New Kachiuk reports.
“A lot of the fungi that people recognize from New York and the northeast are what Peck explained,” said Dr. Kaisian.
Miss Banning first wrote Mr. Peck in 1878, seeking feedback on her manuscript. Unlike the other scientists she tried to contact, he wrote back and they responded for nearly 20 years. Her letters are part of which are on display, providing a window into their relationship.
“You are my only friend on the debate land of the Official Gazette,” she wrote to him in 1879. She recorded her collection forays and scientific observations, and conveyed her dreams of the manuscript. “I have a strong will,” she wrote in 1889.
Miss Banning’s letters were often whimsical and passionate. None of Mr. Peck’s letters to her remained, but his tone in the other letters suggested he was much more restrained. Nevertheless, he treated Miss Vanning like a respected colleague – providing her scientific guidance, an account of the species with her support, and even an account of the species named after her. Their scientific bonds could not be denied.
“It’s a love story, but not between them. They both were in love with fungi,” Haynes said. The play he wrote about their relationship from Miss Bunning’s letter will take place at the exhibition’s gallery opening event on April 4th at the museum.
However, the love triangle tends to change particularly sourly. With no visible publishing prospects for her own, Miss Bunning sent her manuscript to Mr. Peck in 1890, hoping that he could publish it. “He would have had the resources to make it a permanent part of the mycologic record,” Dr. Kaisian said. But he never did.
She expressed how difficult it was to let go of her job and asked her to reassure her that she appreciated her contribution to the field, but she was not received that recognition. “In her letter, she seems to have passed away without really understanding the legacy, the value of her work,” Dr. Kaisian said.
In one of her final letters to Mr. Peck in 1897, six years before her death, Miss Bunning lamented the loss of the book as she fell into poverty alone in a room home in Virginia. “I hardly know that I’ve given up on an illustrated book,” she wrote. “To tell you the truth, I want to look at it and call it my own again, but this is by no means.”
“It still brings tears to my eyes,” Dr. Haynes said.
It was originally Dr. Haynes who revealed the manuscript of Miss Bunning.
The eccentric curator showed it to him in 1969 when he visited the museum for a job interview. He recalls being surprised by the colors that were beautifully preserved by the fact that pages had not been opened to sunlight for decades.
He exhibited some of the paintings in 1981, and they were on display several more times, including the birth of Miss Banenning, including Talbot County, Maryland. With the help of this spotlight, Miss Bunning was led to the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994. However, since the mid-1990s, the photographs were packed in as pigments decompose quickly in light.
Beyond Miss Bunning’s work, “Outcasts” gives visitors a glimpse into the broader historical background of mycology. “Fungi are extremely important organisms, dating back hundreds of millions of years, they shape the very texture of the Earth,” Dr. Kaisian said. “But their stories are still mystical and often ignored.”
In addition to Miss Bunning’s watercolors and letters, the exhibition includes many other artifacts and experiences. Visitors can explore one of Peck’s microscopes and mushroom specimens, one of the recently collected by Dr. Kaysian, or marvel at the incredibly realistic wax sculpture of New York fungi, created for the museum in 1917 by artist Henri Marchand and his son Paul.
The murals, created by museum artists, show the biology of fungi, their role in ecosystems, and their evolutionary history. Rare Fossils of Prototaxite, a 30-foot-high fungus that lived during the Devonian period about 400 million years ago refers to how much the Earth has changed over time.
Overall, Dr. Kaysian said he hopes the exhibition will demonstrate why such natural history collections deserve public support and preservation.
The 150-year-old specimen, hidden in a cabinet where visitors rarely see scientists, maps the limits of a variety of organisms, both geographically and genetically.
“The Natural History Collection is an active repository for contemporary research,” Dr. Kaisian said. “We need more scientific communication about what’s going on here and why it’s important.”
Don’t worry if the salted bodies, partial skeletons, and taxidermied carcasses that fill the museum seem a little, well, quiet. In the latest coup in artificial intelligence, dead animals will be given a new lease of life, sharing their stories and even their experiences of the afterlife.
More than a dozen exhibits, from American cockroaches and dodo remains to a stuffed red panda and a fin whale skeleton, will be given the gift of conversation on Tuesday for a month-long project at the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology.
Dead creatures and models with personalities and accents can communicate by voice or text through visitors’ mobile phones. This technology allows animals to describe their time on Earth and the challenges they have faced in the hope of reversing apathy towards the biodiversity crisis.
“Museums use AI in many ways, but we think this is the first application where we’re talking from an object perspective,” said Jack Ashby, the museum’s assistant director. “Part of the experiment is to see if giving these animals their own voices will make people think differently about them. Giving cockroaches a voice will change the public’s perception of them. Is it possible?”
A fin whale skeleton hangs from the museum’s roof. Photo: University of Cambridge
This project was conceived by natural perspectiveis a company building AI models to strengthen the connection between people and the natural world. For each exhibit, the AI includes specific details about where the specimen lived, its natural environment, how it arrived in the collection, and all available information about the species it represents.
The exhibits change their tone and words to suit the age of the person they are talking to, allowing them to converse in over 20 languages, including Spanish and Japanese. The platypus’s cry is Australian-like, the red panda’s call is slightly Himalayan-like, and the mallard’s call is British-like. Through live conversations with the exhibits, Ashby hopes visitors will learn more than can be written on the labels on the specimens.
As part of the project, the conversations visitors have with exhibits will be analyzed to better understand the information visitors are looking for in specimens. The AI suggests a variety of questions for the fin whales, such as “Tell me about life in the open ocean,” but visitors can ask whatever they like.
“When you talk to these animals, you really get a sense of their personalities. It’s a very strange experience,” Ashby said. “I started by asking questions like, “Where did you live?’ and “How did you die?’ but eventually I asked more human questions. Tanda. ”
Mallard ducks have a British accent due to AI. Photo: University of Cambridge
The museum’s dodo, one of the world’s most complete specimens, fed on fruit, seeds and the occasional small invertebrate in Mauritius, explains how its strong, curved beak is perfect for splitting tough fruit. I explained what it was. Tambaracock tree.
The AI-enhanced exhibit also shared views on whether humans should try to revive the species through cloning. “Even with advanced technology, the dodo’s return will require not only our DNA, but also Mauritius’ delicate ecosystem that supported our species,” the group said. . “This is a poignant reminder that the essence of all life goes beyond our genetic code and is intricately woven into our natural habitats.”
A similar level of obvious care was given to the fin whale skeleton that hangs from the museum’s roof. When I asked him about the most famous person he had ever met, he admitted that in his lifetime he had never had the opportunity to meet anyone as “famous” as humans see them. “But,” the AI-powered skeleton continued, “I would like to think that anyone who stands below me and feels awe and love for the natural world is important.”
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