“Creative AI Exploration and Imagination: Innovative Methods for Alternative Digital Futures” workshop hosted at Leipzig University. 

The international workshop “Creative AI Exploration and Imagination: Innovative Methods for Alternative Digital Futures” took place at Leipzig University from 24 to 26 September. During three days, artists and civil society actors came together to explore artificial intelligence and digital transformation through creative approaches. 

This workshop aimed to test methods from art, design, and participation to think beyond technology-focused perspectives on alternative digital futures. It addressed questions about the social and cultural implications of artificial intelligence, while opening up discussions on future scenarios that take into account social, ethical and aesthetic dimensions.

To address these questions, artistic intervention, narrative approaches, and performative formats were combined with scientific inputs and discussions that open up new perspectives on the topic of AI, leading participants to reflect on the impressions gained and to place them in a broader social context. 

Photographies by Bartje Krüger/Benedikt Haupt

Using an interdisciplinary exchange, the workshop highlighted the importance of negotiating digital transformation in a scientific context that includes the voices from different areas of society, so future developments can be plural, inclusive, and sustainable. 

During the event, participants discovered that alternative methods open up space for collective imagination, which led them to view AI merely as a technological challenge or resource. Because of it, it became clear how artistic and participatory processes can help to formulate new questions, challenge existing power relations, and identify scope for action, to shape a democratic digital future.  

The event was organised by the universities of Graz, Leipzig, Maynooth and Padua, with the support of the Arqus Alliance and the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD.