AI for Preserving Climate

When Google approached Dada Projects to visualise AI in the climate space, we embraced the challenge, countering AI’s dystopian narrative by exploring AI’s role in predicting climate change and protecting ecosystems. The project projects a vision of AI as organic, fluid, and in harmony with nature—coexisting rather than dominating.

On Digital Composting

What happens when we let digital matter die? This participatory session explores the practice of digital composting—a ritual for facilitating the decomposition of digital objects, ideas and identities. By acknowledging the impermanence of online material and rejecting the pressures of preservation, we will allow them to become fertile ground for something new to grow.

Digi-Botanica: Growing a Digital Herbarium from Archival Roots

Explore the intersection of generative design and archival imagery through 'The Herbarium of Digi-Botanica'. This project reimagines botanical forms using a rule-based system in a 3D digital environment. The talk delves into the creative and technical process behind crafting a fictional digital flora, questioning traditional design methodologies and exploring new ways to merge computation with visual storytelling—pushing the boundaries of how we interpret and create with archival materials.

How will the flower bloom in 2100?

As the earth’s climate changes, flowers bloom. If it is a dry year or a wet year, a sunny spring or a cloudy one, they bloom differently. Annelie will present the process of creating Plant Futures, an artistic research project into how flowers literally represent climate data. Looking at just one flower, how do different climate conditions yield different flowers? And how might future climate yield future flowers? Annelie will share the design of the future Circaea alpina flower, as it morphs from 2023 - 2100, becoming a living canvas of future climate data.

From Handcraft to Algorithm: My Creative Journey with AI

In this talk, I’ll share my creative journey, from early handcrafting experiences to incorporating artificial intelligence into my art and design. Exploring techniques, challenges, and discoveries, I’ll discuss the development of digital brushes, AI-driven aesthetics in fashion and textiles, and how to maintain authenticity while working with technology. With both technical and artistic insights, I’ll demonstrate how tradition and innovation can merge to expand creative possibilities.

The Screenless Office

The Screenless Office is a system for working with media and networks without using a pixel-based display. I position it as an Artistic Operating System rather than a universal solution. It gives me a way of participating in contemporary digital, networked culture using alternative aesthetics and values. It's not very fast but this tempo has an advantage in that older, low-power hardware will work just as well as newer equipment. So I also posit the technique as an example of more sustainable permacomputing practice.

Generative Cities: Algorithmic Art in Urban Architecture

Seohyo explores the intersection of generative art, urban architecture, and large-scale screens in this talk. Rather than treating screens as mere displays, she sees them as architectural extensions that interact with their surroundings. Her algorithmic visuals integrate into the urban environment, reshaping public spaces through dynamic, site-specific compositions. The talk also introduces her daily coding project, where she shares generative experiments regularly. Seohyo highlights how generative art can transform cityscapes, creating immersive experiences that blend technology and architecture.

Unearthed: Crafting in the Space Between Nature and Technology

This talk explores the journey of Unearthed, from its beginnings in the ruins of a German monastery to its evolution as a collective merging traditional craft with digital innovation. By mimicking nature’s ecosystems, Unearthed explores forms that exist between the organic and the artificial. Through hands-on making, experimentation, and exploration, the collective blurs the boundaries between the natural and the digital, redefining the relationship between craft, technology, and the organic world—pushing the limits of what it means to create in dialogue with nature.

Machines in the Garden: Technology and Creative Cultivation

In this presentation, artist Lake Heckaman reveals the fusion of nature and technology that informs his new media work. He draws parallels between plant growth and the creative process, explores reality capture as a tool for documenting transformation, and examines technology’s role in mediating social connectivity with physiological and ecological impacts. The talk offers audiences a behind-the-scenes look at creative processes, inviting discovery of a blend of organic and digital artistry that fosters sustainable creativity.

Texere

From weaving to forming language, how analog motifs and patterns that surround us speak of culture, societies and beliefs and how they carved the digital language of today. The talk dives into the creative journey as I shift towards building an artistic practice at the intersections of weaving and the ordinary - exploring how motifs witness the everyday and symbolise relationships while holding stories within them.

In this talk, Stormy discusses the creative process behind an editorial project developed for The Verge that examines the emotional complexities of human relationships with AI companions. By combining practical effects, floristry, projection mapping, and AI-generated video, Stormy explores the challenges and inspirations of each visual asset- from lighting design to floral choices- and discusses the significance of creative experimentation. It's a behind-the-scenes look at one of Stormy's most meaningful projects to date.