Artist Commissions
The CRAIONS Project is an attempt to illuminate issues, threats and opportunities around adoption of AI across creative industries. We’re attempting to understand the implications of AI on creative sectors and artists not simply as technology to “use” or regulate (or cool toys to chase after and be distracted by), but as a profound reordering of how creative value is produced, circulated, and protected. Our aim is to try to help cut through the noise, name the stakes, and create space for artists to understand and help shape the emerging systems rather than be subsumed by them.
We commissioned three artist projects that have something to say about how AI is changing creative life — whether through aesthetics, politics, performance, craft, embodiment, data culture, memory, folklore, or entirely new forms. We weren't seeking work that “illustrates the future.” We wanted to see work that helps us think about how the future is being made.
- Attribution & Accountability Cultural Infrastructure & Ecology Stephanie Dinkins Stephanie Dinkins: Ancestral Understory Much of the public conversation about artificial intelligence begins with the wrong questions. Can machines think? Can they create? Can they replace human labor? These questions matter, but they begin too late in the process. Before intelligence comes learning. Learning determines what is noticed, valued, remembered, ignored, and made possible. It is never an isolated act. It happens through relationships. A child learns within a family. A student learns within…
- Attribution & Accountability Cultural Infrastructure & Ecology Rootoftwo Rootoftwo: “Anyspace? Whatever.” Anyspace? Whatever. (AW) is a solo exhibition and participatory arena on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). The project interrogates the "smart city" and the politics of generative AI, making invisible systems of data extraction and governance legible and contestable through physical making, play, and technologically mediated dialogue. Supported by the USRAO AI & Creativity Commission, this work serves as a critical platform for reimagining civic agency…
- Attribution & Accountability Cultural Infrastructure & Ecology Value & Exchange South Dakota Symphony AI as Cross-Culture Music Translator South Dakota Symphony Orchestra: Artificial Intelligence as a Cultural Translator for Musicians and Audiences: as part of the Lakota Music Project (a partnership with Lakota and SDSO musicians), discover if an AI model can serve as a cultural translator of music thereby influencing how composers create, musicians perform, and audiences engage. The AI Development work was provided by Dakota State University’s Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences. We endeavored…