Museum x Machine x Me
Programme of Events:
Conference
2-3 October, Tate Modern
Late
4 October, Tate Britain
Practice Research Displays
2-6 October, Tate Modern
Practice Research Archive Display & Film Screening
5 October, Tate Modern
Conference
The Museum x Machine x Me conference, convened by susan pui san lok (Director of the Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL) and Mark Miller (Director of Learning, Tate), examined some of the longstanding and new challenges facing museums: the accelerating risks – and potential – of machine learning in the work of transforming collections; and the critical and creative interventions that can help us to reimagine art, nation and heritage.
The two-day programme opened with a keynote conversation between artist and Professor Stephanie Dinkins and Professor Roopika Risam, followed by four themed sessions:
- What do museums ‘want’? And ‘what does AI need from us?’
- ‘Please Give Generously’: Giving, Keeping, Caring and Giving Back
- Looking, Listening, Reading and Writing Otherwise
- Re/voicing, Re/sounding Collections
Read about each conference session in the drop downs below.
Keynote conversation
Stephanie Dinkins’ transmedia practice centres emerging technologies and social collaboration toward more equitable ecosystems and future histories, while Roopika Risam’s research on data histories and ethics intersects with postcolonial and African diaspora studies and digital humanities. Their conversation, moderated by Dr Ramon Amaro, took ‘museum’, ‘machine’ and ‘me’ as entangled points of departure.
Session 1: Museums x Machine Learning: What do museums ‘want’? And what does AI need from us?
What do museums ‘want’ – in the sense of desire, need or lack? This session reflected on the collaborative and interdisciplinary methods developed within the Transforming Collections project, to test and contest disciplinary habits, and to propose the critical, reparative and creative potential of small data and human-centred machine learning (ML) in museums. How can we develop and utilise ML responsibly and ethically, to address new and long-standing challenges facing museums? What is the data? Which humans are centred? And whose museums and heritages are at stake?
Speakers: Professor Mick Grierson and Professor Rebecca Fiebrink, Dr Jon Gillick, Ananda Rutherford. Introduced and moderated by Professor Ewa Luger.
Session 2: ‘Please Give Generously’: Giving, Keeping, Caring and Giving Back
What and how do collections ‘keep’? From ‘keeping’ to ‘caring’ – how do changing political, policy and economic landscapes impact the practices and ethos of collections? How does the language of benevolence and gift-giving reveal or obscure relations of power? What institutional and curatorial strategies might be mobilised to address uncomfortable legacies and suppressed histories? How can museums practice equity and ‘generosity’ in a sector facing evergreater scarcity – to redress, restore and potentially ‘give back’?
Speakers: Dr Tehmina Goskar, Dr Melanie Keen, Dr Alexandre White. Introduced and moderated by Christopher Griffin.
Session 3: Looking, Listening, Reading and Writing Otherwise
The machine learning (ML) development within the Transforming Collections project was driven by textual and visual analyses, with the aim of surfacing habitual omissions, absences, errors and underlying ideas, values and relations. The session focused on alternative approaches to collections and potential object histories that can open up other ways of seeing, hearing and encountering artists and artworks. If art historians, curators, artists and researchers can use ML to navigate and understand collections differently, how might we look, listen, read and write otherwise?
Speakers: Dr Anjalie Dalal‑Clayton, Dr Alice Correia, Dr Andrew Cummings. Introduced and moderated by Elinor Morgan.
Session 4: Re/voicing, Re/sounding Collections
How are collections and archives mutually constituted, entangled and imbricated in ‘national’ (and ‘international’) narratives? How might we attend to the multitudes of unheard voices, within, without and outside museums? This session attended to the ways in which artists and objects can speak out, speak back, sound off and sound out their presence, potential and plenitude, through serious and playful acts of interruption, disruption, resistance, intervention and invention.
Speakers: Dr Charl Landvreugd, Professor susan pui san lok. Introduced and moderated by Dr David Dibosa.
Artists’ Displays
Temporary displays in the Tate Modern South Tank and Level 5 spaces showcased work by three artists who undertook practice research residencies within in the Transforming Collections project, bringing experimental creative approaches to the project’s questions, exploring what and how museums collect and care, how artists and objects come to be ‘known’ (or ‘forgotten’), and the possibilities for interactive machine learning, in sounding out archives, amplifying architectures and re-imagining kinship.
Maud Sulter Archive Display and Film Screening
Following their practice research residency, Evan Ifekoya activated Maud Sulter’s archive through an archive display, reading room, film screening and panel discussion inviting contemporary artists to step into dialogue with the legacy of Sulter’s work.
Late
Curated by Mark Miller and susan pui san lok, the Late programme encouraged audiences to explore how machine learning technology can be used to transform the ways in which we understand and experience museum collections. This special evening of events at Tate Britain celebrated the collaborative work of artists, practitioners, researchers and technologists exploring and developing machine learning tools for critical practice in museums. The participatory programme featured a series of artistic interventions, performances and discursive encounters with art, data and machines, exploring new narratives, questions of power and the potential to critically and playfully activate data in museums through interactive machine learning.
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Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli -
Museum x Machine x Me: Late, 04 October 2024, Tate Britain © UAL and Tate. Photography by Guillaume Valli
