About

“Team Picks,” slide projector + slides, Jenn Karson, Cameron Bremner, Ethan Davis, Syd Culbert, Emma Garvey, Keri Toksu, 2021.

The Plant Machine Design Group at UVM (previously the Art + Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Group) was founded by artist Jennifer Karson in 2020 and is engaged in an ethnographic study of artificial intelligence; we interrogate its tools. We consider machine learning a domain of artistic and artificial production and our studio work occupies its social and computational space. 

Concerned with the histories and futures of human-machine relationships, our research seeks to unearth aesthetic, social, material, ethical and cultural constitutions deep within machine learning’s black box. Tracing crescents that flow from creation to collapse and rooted in evolutions of rational and irrational computations, the artworks we produce are corporeal artifacts extracted from a dense lattice of super-computer and organic flesh.

History

Founded in 2020 by artist Jenn Karson, the core goal of the group is to ensure that A.I. models and emerging technologies best serve humanity and the natural world. The group’s work began and continues with artist-made datasets that trace machine learning systems and reveal the workings of black-boxed algorithms. The group’s artworks and art practice intend to inform public dialog and empower citizens to engage in crucial conversations about emerging technologies’ current and future impacts on our daily lives.

Damaged Leaf Dataset in Latent Space, Jason Stillerman, 2023

On the set at Studio Ju Ju for the filming of “Aquela Que Eu Queria Ser (The One I Wanted to Be),” a collaborative project with the UVM Art + AI Research Group and Paula Higa Dance, 2021.