Digital technologies hold great potential for strengthening democracy and human rights. However, new technology also poses a challenge to both mature and aspiring democracies. Tech for Democracy aims to gather the tech industry, civil society, governments and multilateral organisations to make sure tech works for democracy and human rights, not against them.To move forward and create real change, we need to be able to imagine what the future might look like. Art can give us that space. The Tech for Democracy artwork is a futuristic speculation into the utopias and dystopias of tomorrow, and premiered at the Tech for Democracy conference on November 18, 2021 held in UN City in Copenhagen. Learn more by watching session 3 of the Tech for Democracy conference here.
Generate and download your own personal piece of digital art here: https://techfordemocracy.art/
What is an AI-powered artwork?
The Tech for Democracy artwork uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to generate its own speculative futures in a way that push past the limitations of the human imagination. However, these AI-powered futures are based on human articulations of their democratic future entangled with technology.
Encountering the artwork, the audience is confronted with a visceral audio and visual experience of a cacophony of AI-generated discursive and image-based predictions for the future of human-technology entanglement. The predictions are expressed in a combination of written and read aloud text, visuals and musical compositions. All generated from the machine learning algorithms composing the Tech for Democracy artwork.
Purpose
At its core, the artwork itself is meant to be a provocative reflection and scrutinization of how we as humans today allow the technological development dictate what we imagine for the future – rather than allowing what we imagine dictate the direction and progression of the technological development.
Where can I see it?
In addition to the physical installations, the artwork can also be experienced online where you can engage directly with the AI- artwork by posing your own utopian/dystopian articulations of how you imagine the future relationship between technology and democracy. Hereby adding your reflections to the AI’s expansive dataset, enabling the algorithm to have richer futuristic dreams over time as the work continues to evolve.