Creative AI in the Robot Zoo (20th November)

Members of the MA Global Media Management are once again contributing to the Southampton Festival of Arts and Humanities, this time as part of the in-person Hands-On Humanities day at Avenue Campus in Southampton (20th November from 10:30 – 16:30 GMT).

AI and robots are set to play an increasingly important role in our everyday lives. Will they be human-like in appearance or intelligence, or quite different from us – more like toys, pets, and other animals?

In this workshop you play with and program animal-like robots and toys. What new relationships of play, work and care between people and machines can you imagine? You will test their limitations and design new possibilities for a future of life with technological creatures.

Read more HERE and drop by on the day to participate!

The workshop is run by Dr Seth Giddings, Lesia Tkacz (both GMM staff members) and Yijie Gao (Ink – a PhD candidate at Winchester School of Art), and combines their research into, respectively: AI and technological imaginaries; automated creativity; robot-animal-human relationships.

GMM Student Project ‘Guarding the Love’ Featured at Festival of Arts and Humanities

Today marks the start of Southampton’s annual Festival of Arts and Humanities (formerly the ‘Human Worlds’ festival)! This year the festival includes a huge variety of online events and activities. The festival will run until Saturday, 20 November, when it will end with an in-person Hands-On Humanities Day at Avenue Campus.

The MA in Global Media Management is once again an active participant in the festivities. In particular we are proud to highlight Guarding the Love, an online transmedia story from the 2020-21 cohort of Global Media 2: Industries and Technologies. This project was developed in the course of the year by students Su Cong, Chen Zhao, Li Yunjia, Pan Zichun, Mai Yingying, and Chen Yiwen, and aims to teach Chinese language skills and cultural knowledge through storytelling.

Guarding the Love tells the story of Houyi, a hero from Chinese mythology. From the project website:

Once upon a time there were 10 golden birds in the sky.
They constantly radiated heat and light from the clouds’ end and the mortals on earth called them “the suns”.
The suns never went down, and eventually led to a horrifying drought across the entire land.
Crops died, rivers evaporated, the whole world was burning in inferno.
A hero named HOUYI showed up with his incomparable skill as an archer, he swore to shoot the suns down…

The story is told across four different media: writing, video, comics, and a board game.

Images from the Guarding the Love website.

Learn more on the story’s festival page here.

You can also access the story after the end of the festival on its website.