{"id":8603,"date":"2024-06-11T14:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T14:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/immersivearts\/?p=8603"},"modified":"2026-10-29T09:07:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:07:48","slug":"performing-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/immersivearts\/performing-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"SNF-project: Performing Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Swiss National Science Fund (SNSF) project, 2025-2029<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Performing AI\u2019s goal is to contextualize AI as a dynamic social and cultural artifact that is discursively and practically constituted (that is, performed) in specific contexts and situations. In other words, what does \u201cAI\u201d do, why and how does it do what it does, and what effects does it produce across different disciplines? The project takes the theoretical and conceptual lenses of performance and performativity for navigating AI\u2019s messy entanglements between the social and political, technical and aesthetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project has three core objectives: 1) understand how AI is performed differently in its multiple constitutions (discursive, material, situated) and in\/across disciplines; 2) provide interdisciplinary research and training opportunities for a next generation of researchers to grapple with the complex, multi-scalar nature of AI; and (3) explore new forms of critical public engagement with AI across arts, science, policy and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Performing AI will thus study AI\u2019s performances in the making in three sites \u2013 the policy space, experimental scientific and artistic research labs, and otherwise mundane spaces. Examining AI in the making, the project explores how AI is discursively enacted in policy and governance and examines the material agency of AI in robotics, artificial life and digital arts where human actors have to interact with machinic systems in real time. It also draws upon and develops ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches to trace the situated action and production of AI in public settings of the everyday including a museum as well as in hybrid art, science and technology laboratories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Partners\/ Principal Investigators: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Jobin (University of Friobourg)
Olivier Glassey (University of Lausanne)
Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo)
Christopher Salter  (Zurich University of the Arts)

Zurich Based Researchers:<\/strong>
Dr. Diana Alina Serbanescu: Senior Researcher
Dr. Alexandre Saunier: Senior Researcher
Ilja Mirsky: Research Associate
Dr. Maximilian Kriegleder: Research Associate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What Escapes the Model — The Limits of Formalisation in AI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Visual:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Visual: Rhythms of Breathing in Latent Space, Diana Alina Serbanescu \/ Neranti, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 What Escapes the Model? The Limits of Formalisation in AI <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

28\u201330 October 2026<\/strong> | Toni Areal <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes how we understand and interact with the world, fundamental questions arise about the limits of what computational systems can represent, know, and do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Escapes the Model?<\/em> is a three-day international interdisciplinary workshop bringing together researchers from computer science, artificial life, philosophy, anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and performance research to critically examine the limits and possibilities of formalisation in contemporary AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workshop explores two interconnected themes: embodiment and the mathematical, epistemological, and political dimensions of formalisation. What forms of tacit and embodied knowledge, situated action, and social interaction escape computational representation? How do processes of abstraction, classification, and optimisation determine what becomes possible, visible, measurable, and actionable\u2014and what remains excluded? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, what new forms of knowledge, artistic practice, and aesthetics might emerge through encounters between embodied experience and computational models? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through presentations, experimental methodological exchanges, and collaborative discussions, the workshop approaches the limits of computational models not merely as technical shortcomings, but as productive sites of inquiry and experimentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on critical technical practice, feminist epistemologies of science, and performance theory, it considers artistic and embodied practices not simply as objects of computational representation, but as forms of inquiry capable of challenging, extending, and reconfiguring computational models and their underlying assumptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes how we understand and interact with the world, fundamental questions arise about the limits of what\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workshop can be attended online via livestream:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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