Schlagwort: Art

Ausschreibungen, Tagungen

Call for Papers: ICSR + Art 2026 in London

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) will take place in London, UK, from July 1–4, 2026. ICSR is the leading international forum that brings together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from across disciplines to advance the field of social robotics. For its 18th edition, the conference will feature the special theme ICSR + Art, exploring how robots can transcend their traditional roles to become tools and collaborators in creative practices. At the same time, the conference remains fully open to the entire spectrum of social robotics research, including human–robot interaction, medical and assistive robotics, AI and machine learning, ethics, design, education, cultural applications, and beyond. Accepted papers will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series and indexed in major databases. In addition to regular and short papers, the program will include workshops and special sessions designed to foster exchange across disciplines and communities. Paper submissions are due by February 15, 2026, with notifications on April 15, 2026, and camera-ready papers due May 15, 2026. Proposals for workshops and special sessions are welcome until December 1, 2025. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

Fig.: View of London from the London Eye

Empfehlungen, Publikationen

Tender Digitality

The book „Tender Digitality“, edited by Charlotte Axelsson from the Zurich University of the Arts, will be published in early February 2024. From the publisher’s website: „Tender Digitality introduces an aesthetically oriented concept that intricately intertwines binary systems in a complex manner, setting them in motion. The concept responds to the human desire for sensuality, interpersonal connection, intuition, and well-being in digital environments. It explores ways to (re)transmit these experiences into the analog world of a book, developing its own distinct vocabularies. Readers are guided through the various perspectives of this kaleidoscope, encouraging them to delve into different play-forms of ‚tender digitality‘ and develop their own approach. Assuming the role of researchers, they discover phenomena of extraordinary beauty or bizarreness within the spectrum spanning analogue and digital, social, and technological domains. Through exploration, learning, and the cultivation of ‚tender digitality,‘ readers can envision their own version of a community where individuals and artificial intelligences, avatars and cyborgs, humans and computers navigate digital landscapes with agency, intuition, and sensitivity.“ (Website Slanted) Contributors include Charlotte Axelsson, Oliver Bendel, Dana Blume, Marisa Burn, Alexander Damianisch, Léa Ermuth, Hannah Eßler, Barbara Getto, Leoni Hof, Marcial Koch, Mela Kocher, Friederike Lampert, Gunter Lösel, Francis Müller, Marie-France Rafael, Oliver Ruf, Sascha Schneider, and Grit Wolany. More information at www.slanted.de/product/tender-digitality/.

Fig.: A dance scene at the Zurich University of the Arts (Photo: © ZHdK)

Innovationen, Projekte

A New Text-to-Art Engine

DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. It was announced by OpenAI in April 2022. The name is a portmanteau of „WALL-E“ and „Salvador Dalí“. The website openai.com says more about the program: „DALL·E 2 can create original, realistic images and art from a text description. It can combine concepts, attributes, and styles.“ (Website openai.com) Moreover, it is able to „make realistic edits to existing images from a natural language caption“ and to „add and remove elements while taking shadows, reflections, and textures into account“ (Website openai.com). Last but not least, it „can take an image and create different variations of it inspired by the original“ (Website openai.com). The latter form of use is shown by variations of the famous painting „Girl with a Pearl Earring“ by Johannes Vermeer. The website says about the principle of the program: „DALL·E 2 has learned the relationship between images and the text used to describe them. It uses a process called ‚diffusion,‘ which starts with a pattern of random dots and gradually alters that pattern towards an image when it recognizes specific aspects of that image.“ (Website openai.com) DALL·E mini is a slimmed down version of the powerful program, with which you can gain a first insight. The six images below were automatically generated by DALL·E mini from the text „A young female astronaut with long hair on the flight to Mars“. In total, 9 suggestions were made in a few seconds. Overall, this is a fascinating and valuable project. From the perspective of information ethics and the philosophy of technology, many questions arise.

Fig.: A young female astronaut with long hair on the flight to Mars (Photo: DALL·E mini)