ODI's Data as Culture Programme
Premiered 7 November 2023 at ODI Summit
Online launch: 22 November 2023
When we invited one of the leading voices in the field of AI generated imagery, artist, animator, author, curator, and video essayist Alan Warburton, to create a new work for ODI Summit 2023, nothing prepared us for the critical depth and visual breadth of his response. Created over just three weeks and often using new AI tools within hours of their release, The Wizard of AI, his twenty-minute film takes us from the AI candy ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ of new AI aesthetics to the lows of recognising the exploitation, erasure and potential redundancy of creative practice, and the doom loops of inbuilt bias. But using the metaphor of ‘wonder-panic’ Alan avoids casting judgement, aiming instead to get us all thinking about the seismic shift in our relationship with imagination and realisation through the digital still and moving image.
– Hannah Redler-Hawes ODI Associate: Curator and Director, Data as Culture
