Where humans, machines and creativity meet
Researchers, artists and creative industries came together in Kristiansand for the MishMash Opening Conference. For two days, around 300 people explored what happens when artificial intelligence becomes part of how we create, learn and experience culture. With participants travelling to Kristiansand from across Norway and beyond, the conference highlighted the international scope of the questions MishMash is setting out to explore.
Photo: Hadle Kloster at UiA
Across Kilden Performing Arts Centre, Kunstsilo and Kraftverk/BARE, researchers, artists, cultural organisations and creative industries meet through discussions, research presentations, performances and artistic experiments.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we create, learn, communicate and experience culture. MishMash, Norway’s Centre for AI and Creativity, brings together more than 200 researchers to investigate those changes from different perspectives and across disciplines.
AI is moving quickly into almost every part of society. But for MishMash Centre Director Alexander Refsum Jensenius, understanding the present also means understanding what came before.
Photo: Nico Hagen at South Coast Creative
“If we want ownership of these developments in Norway, we need to raise the level of knowledge and build an ecosystem around both human and technological infrastructure. None of us have enough weight to do this alone. But what we see through MishMash is that together, we are actually quite strong.”
Alexander Refsum Jensenius - Director of MishMash
Photo: Nico Hagen at South Coast Creative
More than 200 active researchers are already involved in MishMash. Many, Jensenius says, have previously felt like they were working relatively alone with these questions at their own institutions.
Bringing them together is one thing. Connecting academia with the private and public sectors and the independent arts is where it becomes particularly interesting.
And while MishMash is a virtual centre where much of the collaboration happens online, the opening conference demonstrated the importance of meeting face to face.
“Human relationships are incredibly important. Meeting physically is essential. When 300 people come together like this, it creates an energy that makes future collaboration easier. The opening conference has exceeded all my expectations.”
Photo: Nico Hagen at South Coast Creative
Authorship in the age of AI
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg of Columbia Law School was one of the keynote speakers at the MishMash Opening Conference. Her talk, Six Images in Search of an Author: Copyright, Artistic Creation and Artificial Intelligence, addressed some of the fundamental questions emerging around authorship, copyright and AI.
Photo: Hadle Kloster at UiA
Technology changes the conversation
The relationship between humans and technology was not only discussed at the conference. It was actively built into the programme. During the Humans session, moderated by Ida Jahr, participants had submitted voice notes in advance through a private Signal chat with an AI model. The system used their responses to place participants into groups for discussions. The result surprised her.
“We are humans in relation with technology. What was fascinating was that the technology actually helped create very deep and insightful conversations between people.”
For Jahr, the experiment also highlighted some of the complexity of interdisciplinary research.
“It is difficult to achieve both breadth and depth at the same time. Recording ourselves while we talk changes how we behave as people, both positively and negatively. In this setting, it had a very positive effect.”
Photo: Hadle Kloster at UiA
Kristiansand as host
For Daniel Nordgård, Deputy Director of MishMash, bringing the opening conference to Kristiansand was also an opportunity to show the connections already being built between research, culture and creative practice in the region.
“We are incredibly proud to have hosted the conference. It has been important for me, for UiA and for CreaTeME. It has also given us the opportunity to showcase some of the non-academic partners that are central to what we are trying to build.”
One moment captured the response better than most.
“One of my highlights was trying for the third time to get into The Logos during the evening programme and still not managing to get in because so many people wanted to experience it. Luckily, we will soon open the CreaTeME sound lab officially, where there will be another opportunity to hear the work.”
LOGOS by Andrew Melchior
The Logos, an immersive sound installation by Andrew Melchior, was among the artistic works presented during MishMash Opening Conference.
Photo: Nico Hagen at South Coast Creative
The Opening Conference showed the scale of the community already forming around MishMash.
But it also made something else clear. The questions surrounding AI and creativity cannot be answered by technologists, artists, researchers, policymakers or creative industries alone.
They have to be explored together.
And in Kristiansand, that conversation has begun.
Julius - the film
Andrew Melchior presents The Logos
Photos: Nico Hagen at South Coast Creative