This article examines Looping Futures Lost and Found (LFLF), a collaborative sound work developed at Malmö University's Medea Lab remixing audio from NASA's Voyager Golden Record alongside newly recorded expressions of regret gathered during a participatory workshop. Originally created as part of the multimedia installation Tender Time for the 2023 Time Space Existence exhibition in Venice, the work interrogates the Golden Record's idealised representation of humanity by inviting in the absences, vulnerabilities, and hauntings excluded from its planetary archive. Drawing on Derrida's hauntology and Bourriaud's relational aesthetics, we argue that regret functions as a compositional method and a temporal disruption, summoning unrealised futures, unresolved pasts, and the spectral traces of voices omitted from dominant narratives of culture and progress. Through looping, sampling, analogue degradation, live remixing, and collaborative performance, LFLF stages a sonic encounter between archival optimism and contemporary planetary precarity. The article combines theoretical reflection with first-person compositional accounts to examine how participatory sound practices can cultivate forms of collective witnessing, relational listening, and ethical openness toward the ghosts inhabiting cultural memory. In doing so, we position hauntological remixing not simply as an aesthetic strategy, but as a relational practice for reimagining whose voices are carried into the future.

This article investigates trends in visual representations of AI. The starting point for this project is the understanding that all technologies are inherently political, and visual representations shape imaginaries, thus contributing to the stabilisation of certain visual discourses. Images of AI occupy a blurred space between scientific visualisation and popular depictions of science. The sample consists of 500 images of AI found using four search engines, as well as cover pages of five international popular science magazines. Familiar themes can be found: images of AI are almost always bathed in a blue hue (``blue glow'') and often feature a brain (``a thinking thing''). It is argued that there is a need for more diverse and versatile media narratives surrounding visual representations of AI, especially those that challenge dominant representational avenues.

In this conceptual article my aim is to challenge the attribute “creative” when

applied to the technical nonhumans (computers, robots or AI). Whilst

acknowledging the long history of technical objects involved in a creative

production, I suggest that such phrasing carries a surplus of meaning that may

lead to ambiguous and possibly deceptive narratives about technical

nonhumans amongst non-professional audiences. I shall be using science and

technology studies (STS) theories as a methodological backdrop, and I shall

rely on the theoretical paradigms about the myth of technology.

With this paper, we suggest a new ethical and conceptual framework for how to enter into companionships with digital technologies and digital creations in an increasingly media dominated society. We argue that such a framework is needed, as recent developments within digital technologies have sparked cultural anxieties concerning the agency and liveliness of such technologies to the extent of creating popular imaginaries of “technologies-as-monsters” (Suchman 2018). Examples of such imaginaries of monstrous technologies can be found within contemporary popular culture, but the ties between the monster and technological developments have a much longer history and have been explored within literature and art for centuries, the most notable example being Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus (1818/2003). Using discourse and textual analysis, as well as Monster Studies and Feminist Posthumanism, we investigate the legacy of the cultural and scientific imaginary of technologies-as-monsters, and the role played by media in transporting these imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015). We offer an analysis of contemporary science fiction narratives across media – such as TV, film and novels – and discuss how they influence imaginaries of the technologies of the future. We also propose new methods based on creative writing for rethinking and retelling stories of future co-existence and companionship with techno-monsters. 

References

Jasanoff, Sheila (2015) “Future imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity”, pp. 1-34 in Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim (eds.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shelley, Mary (1818/2003) Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin.

Suchman, Lucy (2018) “Frankenstein’s Problem”, pp. 13-18 in Ulrike Schultze, Margunn Aanestad, Magnus Mähring, Carsten Østerlund and Kai Riemer (eds.) Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology. Cham: Springer.

The central interest of this paper is the anthropomorphic social robot Ai-Da (Aidan Meller Gallery/Oxford University), perceived as an actor in the interplay of cultural and representational gestures. These gestures determine how this robot is presented—that is, how its activities are articulated, interpreted and promoted. This paper criticises the use of a transhistorical discourse in the presentational strategies around this robot, since this discourse reinforces the so-called “myth of a machine”. The discussion focuses on the individuation and embodiment of this drawing robot. It is argued that the choice to provide Ai-Da with an evocative silicone face, coupled with an anthropomorphic body, is a socio-political decision that shapes public imaginaries about social robots in general.

The Artificial Creativity virtual conference aimed to stir a discussion about the cultural, societal and ethical aspects of artworks featuring artificial intelligence or robots engaged in creative production. The conference dates were 19–20 November 2020 and it was hosted by the research lab Medea, the School of Arts and Communication, and the Data Society research programme – all at Malmö University, Sweden. The conference received generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Videos of keynotes and some participant presentations are available through Malmö University's video repository, MaU Play: https://play.mau.se/playlist/details/0_dvsr6i1f

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. habil. Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany). "Robots versus Machines".
• Professor Mark Amerika (University of Colorado, US). "Fatal Error: Artificial Creative Intelligence (ACI)".
• Professor Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths University, UK). "Beyond Machine Vision: How to Build a Non-Trivial Perception Machine".

Participants:

• Arandas, Luís, Mick Grierson, and Miguel Carvalhais. "Continuous Contributions of Artificial Agents in Performance Regarding Static Artefacts".
• Ashton, Daniel. "Assembling Creative Work Futures: Automation and Portfolio Working in the Creative Economy".
• Axhamn, Johan. "EU Copyright Law and AI".
• Balfour, Lindsay. "Beauty is in the Eye of the Algorithm: Artificially Intelligent Creativity and its Ethical Implications".
• Carvalhais, Miguel and Rosemary Lee. "Spectral and Procedural: A Perspective on Artificial Creativity Through Computational Art".
• Chia, Aleena. "Agency and Automation in Digital Game Production".
• Chow, Pei-Sze. "Ghost in the (Hollywood) machine: emergent applications of artificial intelligence in the film industry".
• Coelho, Inês Rebanda. "Authorship of fictional texts generated by AI".
• Feher, Katalin. "Narrow AI results in narrow creativity: Concepts of creative process in a decade’s perspective from media to art".
• Gallagher, Brad. "Do GPT-2s Dream of Electric Poetry?"
• Goddard, Valentine. "Art can shape how AI is governed".
• Ivanova, Nevena. "Computational Creativity: A Philosophical Study".
• Kadish, David. "Designing Endemic Robots: An Experiment in Sound".
• Koh, Immanuel. "AI-Urban-Sketching in the Age of COVID-19".
• Leach, Neil. "AI and The Limits of Human Creativity".
• Maraffi, Christopher. "Sherlock Frankenstein: Transmedia Character Design with AI Breeding Tools".
• McGarrigle, Conor. "Art Washing Machine Learning".
• Muia, Julian. "Downstream: New Developments in Algorithmic Composition and Music Streaming".
• Olszewska, Anna. "Reflections on machine situationism".
• Stephensen, Jan Løhmann. "Artificial Creativity, Anthropocentrism and Post-Creativity – The Political Stakes".
• Trillo, Roberto Alonso, Peter Nelson, Daniel Shanken, François Mouillot, Mathis Antony, Ryan Au, and Maya Duan. "Collaborative Artistic Production Using Generative Adversarial Networks".
• Wagman, Kelly B. "Ambii: An Ambient & Non-Anthropomorphic Digital Assistant".
• Wasielewski, Amanda. "What role can AI play in the creation and study of art?"
• Wellner, Galit. "Layers of Imagination".
• Willcox, Stacey. "Artificial Synaesthesia: An exploration of machine learning image synthesis for soundscape audio visualisation".

The conference also featured a virtual exhibition in Mozilla's Hubs with the following presentations:

• Emard, Justine. "Supraorganism"
• Partadiredja, Reza Arkan, Davor Ljubenkov, and Carlos Alejandro Entrena Serrano. "AI or Human?"
• Goddard, Valentine. "Introducing the 'AI on a Social Mission' conference".

The virtual exhibition was produced by Maria Engberg and Jay David Bolter within the research project "Virtual conferencing to promote research and scholarly exchange during the current pandemic and possible future disruptions".

In this article, we develop the concept of small acts of engagement (SAOE) in a networked media environment as a conceptual framework to study specific audience practices and as an agenda for research on these practices. We define SAOE, such as liking, sharing, and commenting, as productive audience practices that require little investment and are intentionally more casual than the structural and laborious practices examined as types of produsage and convergence culture. We further elaborate on the interpretive and productive aspects of SAOE, which allow us to reconnect the notions of participatory culture and a culture of everyday agency. Our central argument is that audience studies’ perspective allows viewing SAOE as practices of everyday audience agency, which, on an aggregate level, have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance.

This chapter develops a set of findings around audiences' small-scale acts of engagement with media content made available through digital media technologies. We identify and discuss three articulations of these small acts: (1) one click engagement, (2) commenting and debating and (3) small stories. In contrasting them with more collaborative and convergent productive practices, we further conceptualise these engagements in relation to two main dimensions: effort and intentionality. Lastly, we suggest a conceptualisation of the outcome of these acts which we have labelled interruption. Content flows can be challenged, if not transformed, due to the volume of small acts, which is realised by the producing audiences as well as by mainstream media. Profound changes in the way information is produced and distributed are fuelled by small acts of engagement, and these trends are likely to continue into the futures this book speaks about.

This chapter builds upon central findings arising from consultations with stakeholders about audiences’ engagement in the content flows, defined as an ever evolving ecology of online and offline content produced by a number of more and less institutionalised content producers, ranging from news organisations to YouTubers. First, we note that increasing use of audience analytics tends to fragment the monolithic audience into tangible sub-communities. Second, we discuss how production routines of legacy media change in response to small acts of engagement via digital interfaces. Third, audience creativity enters economic relations and amateur production struggles with a tension between being creative and economic logic of production. Fourth, we look at transformations related to (dis)trust as a mutual dynamic that not only concerns audiences’ trust or mistrust in legacy media, but which is increasingly significant in regard to media’s trust in content produced by audiences as well, making it more difficult for audiences to engage with the content produced by media institutions. 

In this article, I aim to accentuate the importance of the cultural imagination about robots, observing it 'as a mixed register of fantasy and an actual practice' (Kakoudaki 2007, 165). I emphasise the field of robotic art, which, I argue, is in a fluid state of exchange with other areas of robotic research, equally benefiting from the larger context of the cultural imagination about robots. Furthermore, I discuss artworks that offer a valuable commentary on robots even though they are not defined as robotic art in a narrow sense (Penny 2013), given that they feature only the representation of robots or robot-like characters. Nevertheless, these artworks contribute to the circulation of symbolic registers that revolve around the multifaceted figure of a robot.