Goldsmiths Creative Machine to be held at Oxford University

Goldsmiths academics will share knowledge at the Creative Machine symposium at Jesus College, University of Oxford.

Creative Machine Oxford will showcase the latest creative and research applications of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and robotics at The Creative Machine Symposium on Tuesday 30 May.

The symposium will address a range of topics such as ‘Can AI be creative?’, ‘AI and visualisation for scientific discovery’, using ‘AI for Music’ and ‘Human intelligence: The workings of the Human Brain’.

Invited guests will hear from a range of speakers from the worlds of computing, AI, art, robotics and virtual and augmented reality throughout the day and there will be demonstrations of some of the latest creative AI technologies. 

Experts from globally-recognised organisations and institutes, including King.com, Oxford Computational Neurosciences, MIT Technology Review, Nuffield Clinical Neurosciences, Spotify, the Victoria and Albert Museum and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience will also be in attendance.

Goldsmiths academics including Professor William Latham, Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie, Professor Mark d’Inverno, Professor Larisa Saldatova and Dr Oonagh Murphy will share insights throughout the day.

Professor William Latham, who is a co-organiser of Creative Machine and a pioneering computer artist and games designer, said: “The fundamental question of whether a computer can be more creative than a human is a current and contentious topic of debate.

“The Creative Machine Symposium addresses this question from a range of perspectives led by experts from across computing, the arts, sciences and neurosciences. Related themes such as how human/computer creative partnerships can work and AI mechanisms for discovery in science will also be explored. Secondary topics such as how do you measure human or machine creativity? will be covered along the way”.

Goldsmiths first Creative Machine event was held back in the Department of Computing in 2014 and took the form of an art exhibition that explored the intersection between human and machine creativity, asking the question ‘Could a machine replace the human artist, and if not, could the machine be an effective creative partner to the artist?’ This question has remained at the core of each Creative Machine Symposium ever since.

Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie, Goldsmiths AI Creativity Computing Scientist and co-organiser, said: “Moving the Creative Machine outside London for the first time, we are delighted to be co-hosting with Jesus College with its huge academic heritage being combined with Goldsmiths’ creative computing and art.”

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Jesus College Principal and Professorial Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Oxford said: “This year generative AI has taken the world by storm – AI systems that generate startling new content – a theme at the heart of Creative Machine Oxford. Creative Machine is a flagship conference for academics and those working in the creative industries interested in the convergence of AI and creativity, and the College is pleased to be working in collaboration with Goldsmiths on this event.”

The event will be held on Tuesday 30 May 2023 at Jesus College Oxford’s new Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub, supported by the Alan Turning Institute.

More details of the event can be found on the Creative Machine website. Whilst the event is by invitation only, a selection of the talks, demonstrations and artworks from the event will be shared online afterwards.