Heritage Data Imaginaries: Fabulation against Machinic Hallucination, Seminar by Dr Tom Schofield, Reader in Digital Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University
Recent work in heritage imaginaries has sought to highlight how ‘socially transmitted representational assemblages […] interact with people’s imaginings and are used as meaning-making and world-shaping devices (Salazar, 2012; 2024). Meanwhile in popular media discourse, much has been made of the capacity of AI technologies to ‘imagine’, ‘hallucinate’ or ‘dream’.
In this talk I will attempt to give some critical answer to these latter claims asking how a rhetorics of AI as an ostensible ‘imagining technology’ intersects with its use in museums. In particular, I will ask how AI may be already feeding into heritage imaginaries and how a focus on the nature and methods of co-imagining from the discipline of design might serve both as a heuristic device for interpreting the effects of AI systems in museums and as a strategic countermeasure.
Dr Tom Schofield is an artist, designer, and researcher whose practice and research explore themes of power, justice, and exploitation in socio-technical arrangements. His work often explores alternative or reimagined histories and futures of technologies by remaking them under the influence of ideas from fiction or magic. Most recently, he has been developing adversarial attacks against AI vision using parody as the main critical vehicle. He teaches creative and critical technology practices at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK, and frequently works with young children in speculative approaches to contemporary technology design.