For the seventh edition, the annual Digital Design Weekend is returning to the V&A. The museum premises will host the festival from 22th through to the 23 September. This year’s focal theme is Artificial Intelligence. Along with the accompanying topics of human-machine interactions and potential future worlds, this festival edition is an attempt to raise questions related to complex relationships with AI and also, with technology in general. If the machines are able to do creative work, where lies the future of design? How should we conceptualise legal rights and accountability to AI? How objective or biased are robots? What are the basic ethical and social implications of AI? Could AI help humans develop a new perspective, maybe a new sense of beauty?

DDW will offer several exhibitions, interactive installations, performances, showcases, talks and workshops, some of them family-friendly but all of them free and drop in. Among many events, visitors will be able to hear about algorithmic bias, transgenic art and computer-generated art, or to experience dance performance which explores possibilities of introducing nonhuman bodies into performance space.  Furthermore, spectators will have a chance to meet Embarrassed Robots, which are challenging the need for robots to adopt human expressions and emotions, or to get acquainted with ways of digital self-protection using storyboarding kits.

Neil Mendoza and Soomi park, which have been featured in CLOT mag will be presenting their installations.

There is also a good representation of Spanish artists, like Javier de Los Rios, who will be showing WPORTRAITS, a piece that explores the way people represent themselves in the big mosaic of Internet, at the same time it studies how painting tradition’s heritage affects
our daily life.

For the ones with the most hands-on approach to learning and experiencing, there will be several intriguing workshops, including a quick way to make Twitter bots, a dive into “fake news” phenomenon and a game in which you will be creating sci-fi stories about current and future topics. You will also be able to, for instance, learn how to make a camera for capturing wildlife and to compare your vision of the world with AI – or, to collaborate with one to create a unique cyborg tale!

All in all, the up-and-coming weekend could be a very educational and fascinating one, if you happen to be in London.

Text by CLOT Magazine (Twitter @clotmagazine)

(Photo courtesy of Jaime de los Rios)