Tuesday, December 3, 2024 at 07:00 pm
free
If you can't attend in person, join us via the livestream.
In this talk, Mark Shepard presents his work in progress on Unattributable Urbanism, a project that employs experimental applications of generative A.I. and machine learning to address the conditions he describes below:
"As we more frequently come to know cities through the data they generate, we often deploy algorithms as tools for insight. As has been well documented, methods involving A.I. and machine learning introduce forms of bias that are both inherited from human bias residing in datasets used to train a model and bias generated in the way in which algorithms operate on that data. To be perceived by these systems, urban spaces, events, and behaviors must exhibit legible features that can be extracted by an algorithm. Unfamiliar, vague, ambiguous, opaque, and vacillating entities often remain beneath the threshold of confidence by which this form of machine vision is attenuated. The unattributable is by design minimized within this feature space" (Mark Shepard).
Unattributable Urbanism is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and by the UB Humanities Institute and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Bio: Mark Shepard [www.andinc.org] is an artist, architect, and researcher whose work addresses contemporary entanglements of people and data, code and space, knowledge and power. His work has been exhibited at museums, galleries, and festivals internationally, including the Venice International Architecture Biennial; the Prix Ars Electronica; The Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF); Haus für elektronische Künst, Basel; FACT Liverpool; the Medialab Prado; and Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City. It has been supported by Creative Capital, the European Union Culture Programme 2007–2013, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Architectural League of New York, among others. Mark is a Professor in the UB School of Architecture and Planning, where he directs the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies(CAST).