people: Göran Wretling

The UmArts Summer Exhibition 2025 celebrates our new Small Visionary Projects in art, architecture, design, sloyd and music. Researchers will present their practice-based work-in-progress investigating issues of sustainability and resilience at different scales. 

This summer we will present several new projects in the UmArts Research Studio including: Little things by Robin Durant; Enargeia by Edith Marie Pasquier; Maker Utopias by Cindy Kohtala, Magnus Wink, Rickard Åström and Sara Rylander; Pushing the Limits of Craft by Sara Rylander; and In-between the lines: an exploration of the street as a place of cultural negotiation by Richard Conway & Sangram Shirke. Architectural experiments around the UmArts Studio building will feature Healing the Wounds by Constanze Hirt; Tooling Ice and Sawdust by Elena Vazquez & Julio Diarte. Throughout the opening day there will be performances including Carla Colleveccio’s Performative Bodies; Göran Wretling’s investigation into AI as a Collaborative Partner in Music; and Edith Marie Pasquier´s Songs for the Slain Birds and Children- 2023 – 2025.

The UmArts Small Visionary Research Projects (SVP) provide seed funding to support research active staff to try out new ideas with big ambitions that contribute to the UmArts research community across the Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå School of Architecture, Department of Creative Studies in Education and Bildmuseet. 

Open 11 June to 18 June 12.00-16.00

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Opening Program 11 June 14.00-19.00

14.00-14.10 Opening Summer Exhibition: Welcome by Director Ele Carpenter and Thomas Wågberg, incoming Dean of the Faculty of Technical Science.

14.10-14.30 Performance by Edith Marie Pasquier 

14.30-15.00 Presentations by Robin Durand, Cindy Kohtala, Sara Rylander, Richard Conway

16.00-16.30 Performance Carla Collevechio, Black Box, Curiosum

17.00-17.20 Presentations by Elena Vazquez & Julio Diarte, Constanze Hirt

18.00 Musical performance by Göran Wretling

This project on ArtificiaI Intelligence as a Collaborative Partner in Music Composition and Music Production delves into the intersection of AI and music creation. As a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer, Göran will explore possibilities and challenges through human-AI interaction when collaborating with AI-tools in music composition and music production. Previous research, such as Newman et al. (2023), indicates that while AI tools offer new opportunities for creative expression, they also present challenges like cultural bias and potential homogenization of work due to Eurocentric training data.

The methodological approach involves autoethnography, allowing for a reflective and culturally insightful examination of the artistic process. Collaboration with other AI explorers aims to develop more shared insights and opportunities. The project’s outcomes, including audio and video presentations and compositional work, will be shared publicly via the Research Catalogue and a research workshop will facilitate further exploration and research in the field.

UmArts is leading research in Art, Architecture, Design and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Umeå University in partnership with the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) and Umeå University’s Centre for Transdisciplinary AI (TAIGA). In 2023, curator Sarah Cook joined UmArts as the WASP-HS Guest Professor in Art and AI in partnership with Bildmuseet, Umeå School of Architecture (UMA), and Umeå Institute of Design (UID).

The Art and AI working is a group is chaired by Guest Professor Sarah Cook, and includes UmArts postdocs, mentors and artists in residence who are working with AI to share their research and develop new collaborative projects. The group considers how arts research can contribute to the social and ethical discourses of AI and machine learning, working in partnership with museums and galleries, artists and curators. The programme critically interrogates the aesthetics and politics of AI, collaborating with, and challenging the algorithmic logic underpinning hardware and software development. We are interested in how creative encounters can allow publics to experience and engage with the ethical considerations and societal shifts that widespread use of AI will bring and feeding that back into AI development.

The Octopus Club

The Octopus Club is open to all. It is a book club to close-read texts, artworks and films which investigate distributed intelligence and networked knowledge. Please email Emelie El-Habta UmArts Research Co-ordinator you would like to join.

The next text is ‘The Maniac’  by Benjamín Labatut about the life of John von Neumann nominated by Dimitri. This is contrasted with ‘Klara and the Bomb’ by artist Crystal Bennes, about Klara von Neumann who was married to John, nominated by Ele. This comparison will provide an interesting insight into the history of computing and AI from biographical and feminist artistic perspectives. We will have a short discussion about the books with tea and biscuits after the working group meeting and find a date for a full discussion in March/April. (Some of us are also reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun’ for the full trio of titles!) next meeting to be confirmed for March.