The Problem of Pace – full presentation at the Global Dialogue on Art and Technology forum in Beijing this week.
I was invited to speak alongside China and international practitioners across a vast range of disciplines in arts and culture including immersive technologies, film and media, games, theatre and sound – unpacking how the integration of art and technology has evolved into a cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary global practice.
It’s a huge range of topics across many different contexts, with a recurring theme being AI and how it is used in advancing projects in the art-culture integration space. The presentations were given only 8 minute slots, many of which focused on projects, research or organisational work.
I decided not to talk about technology on this occasion and neither celebrate nor vilify AI. Let’s pare it back to basics – let’s talk about design process. The problem of pace in the age of AI – as tools become faster and more capable, what begins to erode in our design processes?
Of late, slowness in design is something I’ve begun thinking about quite a bit from the farm, so this felt fitting to question and ask aloud. The talk resonated with the audience, and I had some very good conversations with multiple people afterwards.
The current conversation around AI tends to focus on how its outputs replace people, but I feel the pace of generative AI is also shrinking the design process – and therefore the thinking and the failing that happens before design comes to a resolve.
It was good to unpack this with others and equally to learn from the range of presentations across the forum. Lots to think about and valuable to gain different perspectives across so many fields in arts and culture.
