Summary: State of the Art Podcast was invited to attend and speak with participants in CODAME's Art + Tech Festival, ARTOBOTS at The Midway earlier this month. Part 1 features one-on-one on-site conversations with artists Alexander Reben and Meredith Tromble on art and AI. We conclude the episode with a fascinating conversation with UC Berkeley artist and professor, Ken Goldberg, on the "uncanny valley." Thank you CODAME for inviting us to cover this awesome event, and a special shoutout to Vanessa Chang, CODAME curator, for personally extending the invitation to us. You can listen to our interview with Vanessa Chang here. -About Alexander Reben- Alexander Reben is an artist and roboticist who explores humanity through the lens of art and technology. His work probes the inherently human nature of the artificial. Using tools such as artificial philosophy, synthetic psychology, perceptual manipulation and technological magic, he brings to light our inseparable evolutionary entanglement to invention which has unarguably shaped our way of being. This is done to not only help understand who we are, but to consider who we will become in our continued codevelopment with our artificial creations. Projects referred to in this episode: Boxie, Headgasmatron, and Pulse Machine Learn more at http://areben.com/ -About Meredith Tromble- Meredith Tromble is a multimedia artist, writer, performer, and teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. Learn more about Meredith at http://meredithtromble.net/ -About Ken Goldberg- Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and UC Berkeley Professor focusing on robotics. He was appointed the William S. Floyd Jr Distinguished Chair in Engineering and serves as Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department. He has secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information, and Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School. Ken is Director of the CITRIS "People and Robots" Initiative and the UC Berkeley AUTOLAB where he and his students pursue research in machine learning for robotics and automation in warehouses, homes, and operating rooms. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithms for part feeding and part fixturing and the first robot on the Internet. Despite agonizingly slow progress, he persists in trying to make robots less clumsy. He has over 250 peer-reviewed publications and 8 U.S. Patents. He co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Ken's artwork has appeared in 70 exhibits including the Whitney Biennial and films he has co-written have been selected for Sundance and nominated for an Emmy Award. Ken was awarded the NSF PECASE (Presidential Faculty Fellowship) from President Bill Clinton in 1995, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005 and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016. He lives in the Bay Area and is madly in love with his wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain, and their two daughters. Tweet him @Ken_Goldberg -About CODAME- Sparked by the network of creative coders, designers, and artists that Bruno Fonzi and Jordan Gray knew from around the world, CODAME was founded to celebrate their passion for art and technology. The CODAME brand of immersive, engaging, and out of the ordinary experiences was coined at the inaugural CODAME ART+TECH Festival in 2010 on a foggy rooftop in downtown San Francisco. CODAME builds ART+TECH projects and nonprofit events to inspire through experience. Follow them @codame Tweet them @codame Learn more here -About ARTOBOTS- June 4-7, 2018 @ The Midway, San Francisco The annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival is a four-day conference with workshops, talks and nightlife events with immersive, engaging, out of the ordinary experiences. The festival features gallery installations, screenings, and performances. This year’s ART+TECH Festival, codenamed #ARTOBOTS, examines the sphere of robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence. Through art, discussion, play and performance, CODAME probes these potentials.
