About this Event
Is AI just a new chapter in the long story of humans living with machines? Or is it a new, threatening reality? Come along and find out for yourself how artists are taming the machine and hear comedians add their views on our new robot overlords.This interactive all-day event will showcase the convergence of AI and the arts and explore crucial questions around how we are going to live in harmony with powerful machines unleashed by revolutions in computing power and machine learning.
The festival's free daytime sessions consists of visual and musical artists and University researchers demonstrating their creative work with AI, as well as a 2-hour comedy show featuring science comedians from around the country taking aim at AI and robots.
An "Ask the Expert" session (ticketed here) allows you to find out everything you wanted to know about AI by talking to Professor Leslie Carr.
The ticketed evening events kick off with a concert- we are excited to welcome special guests the ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE JAZZ to perform improvisations between instrumentalists and an AI player.
The festival culminates with a lively panel discussion , featuring UN Advisory Council on AI member Dame Wendy Hall, BBC technology journalist Bill Thompson and other special guests.
The concert and panel are followed by late-night standup comedy from comedian Ted Hill who will be assisted by an AI comedy intern developed by University of Southampton researchers.
The festival is a production of the University of Southampton organised by the Web Science Institute in collaboration with the Winchester School of Art and the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities.
Please note: all and should be bought from the Winchester Theatre Royal web site; only tickets for the "Ask the Expert" session can be obtained from this Eventbrite page.
"[The ONJ] continues to push post-modern jazz forward in an entirely original way." (JazzTrail)
The ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE JAZZ was created in 1986 by the French Ministry of Culture as a strong political statement of its desire to recognize the importance of jazz and the impact of its musical output.
Throughout its history, this unique orchestra has played a major role in the development of jazz and improvised music, and now explores for the first time the possibilities of interaction between the instrumentalists and the machine within a large jazz orchestra.
By integrating newly designed AIs from IRCAM (the French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound) in the composition process and in the soloists’ improvisations in real-time, the computer becomes, in turn, a generator of electronic orchestrations for the composers and an improvisation partner for the musicians.
"few comedians harness the frenetic activity of their minds quite as comprehensively as Ted Hill" (Chortle)
Ted Hill, a comedian and science communicator, has previously used AI to generate the voices of historic American presidents in his comedy show "All the Presidents Man". Now he comes to Winchester Theatre Royal to debut an AI comedy intern that he has been developing with William Hunt, a postgraduate research student from the University's MINDS (Machine Intelligence for Nano-Electronic Devices and Systems) Centre for Doctoral Training. `Drawing on his research experience, William has trained a version of ChatGPT to interact with audience members under Ted's direction.
As part of his University course, William has himself been trained in standup comedy and will be telling his own research story in the afternoon AI Comedy session.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Theatre Royal Winchester, Jewry Street, Winchester, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00 to GBP 25.00