Workshop: Categorisation and Artificial Intelligence: System, Limit, and Beyond

22 November

Thu 22 Nov, 6.30 – 9pm
SPACE Mare Street
£7/5
Buy tickets here

This workshop, led by SPACE Art + Technology residents Shinji Toya and Murad Khan, will take the form of a lecture, followed by a group discussion, looking at classification and categorisation in machine learning systems that use Artificial Intelligence. Specific focus will be given to recommendation services and facial recognition technologies.

The lecture will be held by Simon Crowe, a software developer and researcher who will present approaches to subverting and understanding the algorithms used by dominant cloud platforms such as Google and Amazon to predict, profile and categorise us. Following this Shinji Toya and Murad Khan will present their research into how visual practice and image manipulation can be used to interrogate the categories created by facial recognition algorithms (Betaface).

Toya and Khan’s collaboration explores the limits of classification and categorisation that structure both social and technical systems. In particular, they have been looking at the way in which the social structures and hierarchies of race are imported into, and transformed within, machine-learning systems for facial recognition.

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Murad Khan is an independent researcher and theorist, currently finishing a MRes in Philosophy at Central Saint Martins, where he is researching the connections between mathematics and metaphysics with a focus on the relationship between Computation and Time.

Shinji Toya is a multimedia artist, researcher and currently a Visiting Practitioner at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He uses programming, online participation, image manipulation, narrative and speculation as a means for addressing issues of data economy and digital memory.  

Simon Crowe is a London-based software developer and researcher. He has worked on a range of projects including 3D games, artworks, web and desktop applications. His research interest are an intersection of software engineering and questions of power, control and agency in digital cultures.