Culture Crossover is Techworld's weekly mashup of tech and creativity: a series that highlights examples of projects, exhibitions and events that delightfully bridge the worlds of technology and culture.
Here is the rundown of everything we've covered so far.
AI becomes art historian at Rutgers Art and AI Lab
Academics at Rutgers University have trained a Creative Adversarial Network to analyse artworks.
Interactive Filmmaking Lab adds immersion to movies
Dr Polina Zioga explains how Brain-Computer Interfaces can enable our thoughts to interact with films as we watch them.
Shorts at BFI's London Film Festival 2019
This year at the BFI's annual London Film Festival, a selection of short films focus on the disruption – in the parlance of the technology entrepreneurs spurning it along – of the fabric of everything.
Sea Things by Sam Jacob Studio
As part of London Design Festival 2019, software company SAP has commissioned an installation at the V&A to raise awareness around the issue of ocean plastics. We interview Sam Jacob of Sam Jacob Studio to learn more. See also: Sony's European Design Centre director Philip Rose talks us through the chaos of the firm's sensor-driven double pendulum installation.
Films about tech at LFF 2019
Technology seems to mediate everything we do, consume, and are. So it is little wonder that after the strong showing from last year, another tranche of films at the BFI's London Film Festival have science and technology as central themes, along with the related mystery, fatigue, and ethics that many of us are only just beginning to grapple with.
Researchers use AI to predict a film's success
Researchers from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea can predict a film's success by applying deep learning models to its plot summaries. Does the growing influence of algorithms in filmmaking challenge human creativity?
An interview with the directors of Aniara
A film based on the cold war sci-fi classic by Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson, about a spaceship of refugees fleeing a doomed earth, holds up a bleak mirror to the way world events seems to be headed. Techworld speaks with directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja to learn more.
Frankissstein: A Love Story
Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel leaves readers wondering if they should be inspired by or fear the latest developments in the world of AI. Techworld speaks with the influential author here.
Nimiia Vibié
Jenna Sutela's solo debut attempts to channel a 19th century medium to the Martians through computerised divination.
The Great Hack
The Great Hack could be another bleak episode of Netflix’s techno-dystopian horror series Black Mirror. A seedy analytics company weaponises millions of data points extracted from unwitting social media users, only to manipulate their political worldviews en masse, foment intercultural conflicts, and, ultimately, usher in an authoritarian leadership. Unfortunately The Great Hack is a documentary.
Finiliar
British artist Ed Fornieles has created a digital creature called the Finiliar whose emotions are connected to fluctuations in the stock market
HYPER-REALITY
Six-minute concept film HYPER-REALITY envisions a gamified future world where a mesh of digital phantasms bleed into the mundanities of everyday existence.
Black Mirror season 5 review
We critiqued the season five of the series, where Charlie Brooker dodges a crucial opportunity to hold tech CEOs to account.
Highlights at the Barbican's AI: More Than Human
We cherry picked some of the most interesting exhibits on display at the Barbican.
Osmosis review - technology through a human lens
Competing algorithms from the likes of Bumble, Hinge and OkCupid all attempt to answer one question: can computers crack the compatibility code? In Osmosis, Netflix's new French language series set in the not-too-distant future, Osmosis believe their technology holds the answer.
Uber Impact: The Cost of Disruption and Monopoly
Photographer Matthew Joseph goes to the frontline of Uber’s creative destruction.
Britain, Take a Bow
Graeme Crowley fuses art with algorithms in an evolving portrayal of Brexit.
Imaginary Cities at the British Library
Techworld spoke to Michael Takeo Magruder, the artist behind Imaginary Cities, an exhibition at the British Library that transforms digitised archives of 19th Century cityscapes into glittering, shifting and evolving artworks built on top of complex technological foundations.
The UK's leading anime expert
We spoke to Helen McCarthy, the UK's foremost anime expert, about the Barbican's upcoming 'Anime's Human Machines' series, Japan's unwavering techno-optimism, and the link between shintoism and anime.
Beatboxing with a digital twin
World famous beatboxer and visual artist Harry Yeff, AKA Reeps One has released a film, We Speak Music, that charts the relationship between people and technology through the lens of the human voice. Techworld chats to Yeff about the role of the artist in the modern age and what it's like to beatbox with your digital twin.
“When two black holes f*ck”
William Basinski sampled the sound of two back holes colliding on his latest album, but isn't space silent? We journey billions of years through the space time continuum to give you a potted history of the siren song of a black hole.
Takumi, a 60,000 hour long film
A film directed by Clay Jeter and sponsored by Lexus seeks to place the extreme craftsmanship of Japan's 'takumi' in the modern era, raising questions about narrative, and work, in the age of automation
Cyborgs at the Wellcome Collection
An evening programme at the Wellcome Collection explores the notion of the cyborg and the boundaries between humans and technology as well as the boundaries between races, genders and classes.
Faceless Portraits Transcending Time
The first human-AI collaborated art show launched at the HG Contemporary gallery, New York. Techworld spoke to the human half of the team about the future of AI in art.
T. Coraghessan Boyle's dystopian stories
He's the author of techno-dystopian tales that give Black Mirror a run for its money.
Silicon Ear: Sonically mapping data centres
Bristol composer Sam Kidel takes influence from the LulzSec-affiliated DDoS tool the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, and maps out a rave in a Google data centre using floor plans.
Dear Data: A long distance visual data exchange
Dear Datais a project that took on one central question: Can you get to know someone simply from their data? Each week, two information designers plucked a behavioural or experiential metric from their lives, measured it, and highlighted the results in infographics tiny and ornate enough to fit on the front of a postcard.
This story, "The Culture Crossover Series" was originally published by Techworld.com.