Creative AI Meetup: Satellites, Oceans and Disintegrating Orchestras

​​This event will host talks from artists and researchers presenting AI technologies and their creative applications.

​​Event schedule:

​​18:00 Arrival

​​18:30 Introduction by Luba Elliott

​​18:35 Robert Laidlow, Oxford University: 'In My Image - Disintegrating the Orchestra in TECHNO-UTOPIA'

​​19:00 Sergei Nozdrenkov, wildflow.ai : 'Decoding Corals'

​​19:25 Nye Thompson, Artist: 'CU Soon - making art with satellites'

​​19:50 Talks finish, networking

​20:50 Event close

​This event is kindly hosted by Canva. Attendees will be sent an NDA to sign in order to access the space shortly before the event.

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​More on talks and speakers:

​​Robert Laidlow, Oxford University: 'In My Image - Disintegrating the Orchestra in TECHNO-UTOPIA'

​The talk gives a preview of my newest work, TECHNO-UTOPIA, for orchestra and soloist performing on newly designed embedded AI instruments. The piece explores memory, magic, ruthless algorithms, and what makes music more than just data. In the talk, I'll focus on the ways that AI is used to disintegrate and remake the orchestra, and the creative possibilities that emerge from doing this live on-stage with an actual orchestra. I will also demo one of the new instruments of the piece, trained with 3000 hours of BBC orchestral archive recordings.

​Robert Laidlow’s “gigantically imaginative” (BBC Radio 3) music discovers new forms of creative expression through colliding advanced technology, scientific collaboration, and live performance. His orchestral music includes ‘Silicon’ for orchestra and artificial intelligence (BBC Philharmonic), ‘Exoplanets’, made in collaboration with James Webb Space Telescope astrophysicists (London Philharmonic & Basel Interfinity Festival), and ‘TECHNO-UTOPIA’ (BBC Radio 3 & Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra). He is a Fellow in Composition at Jesus College, Oxford University, a governor of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and an Associate of the Royal Northern College of Music.

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​Sergei Nozdrenkov, wildflow.ai : 'Decoding Corals'

​Think of coral reefs as underwater cities alive with drama and colour -- tiny creatures throwing midnight spawning parties, fish weaving through living rainbows. I’ll show you how a bit of AI magic teases out their hidden stories from images, DNA and sounds. Then we’ll wander into the big dream: a future where every forest and reef is wired into a planetary “nervous system,” boosting bandwidth between humans, technology and the living world -- so we shift from a zero-sum fight with nature to growing our shared biosphere. With that collective intelligence, we could turn deserts into jungles -- or even terraform Mars. Join me to see why decoding corals is our first step toward rewilding tomorrow.

​Sergei Nozdrenkov is running the early-stage startup wildflow.ai, focused on building foundation models for biodiversity to protect and restore coral reef ecosystems. Previously, he spent 6 years at Google. He was the founding engineer of the biodiversity AI moonshot at Google X, tackling the biodiversity crisis of insects - focusing on pollinators (helping the bees) and pest management (reducing pesticide use). Before that, he worked on monetization in Ads and was stitching satellite data in Google Maps. He dreams of freediving with humpback whales in Tonga one day.

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​​Nye Thompson, Artist: 'CU Soon - making art with satellites'

​There are about 2,000 satellites crossing the sky over your head right now. They are critical infrastructure as well as the actors in high stakes military and commercial power struggles. Artist Nye Thompson has a history of making art for machines. She will be sharing her recent project 'CU Soon' which involved exchanging postcards with orbiting satellites - sidestepping the gatekeepers and conventional uses of satellites to propose a different kind of relationship with these hidden machines.

​Nye Thompson is an artist turned software designer turned artist. Her work spans image-making, video and sculptural installation, film-making, archiving, mapping, experimental software architectures and process-based performance. Thompson has made the world's first horror film for machines and exchanged postcards with orbiting satellites.