OPEN CALL OPPORTUNITY| Art-AI Festival 2022

Deadline for proposal: Midnight BST/UTC+1, 12 August 2022

We are offering £5,000 to an artist to create an original artwork that responds to the AAF 2021 programme and a dataset of text content from analysis of feedback derived from the festival stakeholders.

The goal of AAF is to showcase artificial intelligence in ways that demonstrate its emerging capabilities, creative applications and key challenges with its use and application (see www.art-ai.io/about).

The artworks included in AAF 2021 demonstrated AIs of different types – we identified three themes from the work: faces, patterns, words. Your work may comprise any representation of AAF 2021 but will not reappropriate original artworks provided by artists in the programme. Documentation from the artworks such as video teasers and artist talks can be used. An archive of photographs and images collected during AAF 2021 can be made accessible for use in the commission if required. The feedback provided by stakeholders is also a key component of the artwork that we would like to see explored in the commission. The text dataset highlights what people know/don’t know about AI, the value of the festival and impacts and potential of digital art on the cityscape. You may of course choose to create or to use and incorporate other publicly accessible datasets pertaining to Leicester and the environs of the AAF 2021.

Available datasets for use in the work is –

A description of the programme work (AAF 2021 website, www.art-ai.io/programme)
Artwork tasters of installations for AAF 2021 (www.youtube.com/ArtAIFestival)
Artist talks for AAF 2021 (youtube)
Photography and image collection of AAF 2021 (by request)
Text file of Leicester commentary on 16 Leicester points of interest created for Hello Lamp Post AAF 2021 installation (by request)
Text files of stakeholder feedback on AAF 2021 (to be provided)
Your work will be primarily visual (rather than text) and possibly interactive in some way. It should be connected to Leicester, reflecting the home of the AAF, which can be achieved through the dataset used. If audio is to be an interaction mode, then you will need to demonstrate how a general public audience may access this.

Your artwork should be screen based and the work should ‘articulate a response’ to the multimedia dataset from AAF 2021. Screen/s may be any format (eg., mobile, computer, projection) but should include the potential to exhibit the work on a landscape or portrait 65” plasma.

You will be expected to work with the AAF team in the development of the work, giving regular updates on progress.

We expect an artist talk about the work to be delivered as part of the commission, albeit at a time later in the year to coincide with the artwork on display. We anticipate the talk will be online live stream, rather than in person.

The commission fee includes expenses incurred in the making and testing of the work.

The commission will be a legacy of Art AI Festival 2021 and will become a piece that we will showcase as a lead in to our next funding application and event in 2023.

We aim to exhibit the commissioned work in Leicester from mid October 2022.